December 2, 2018 “Shameless Song” – Psalm 25

Psalm 25
“Shameless Song”
December 2, 2018 – First Sunday in Advent

My sister and I made fun of my mom when she sang in church. That sounds awful… but so did Mom. I say this as someone who inherited her lack of musical talent truly and completely. Like my mother, I really enjoy singing, but, very much like her, I am basically absent of capacity to do it well. Forget about a bucket, by myself I would have difficulty carrying a tune in a dump truck.

Church was a forgiving venue. The only way Mom or I could sing was when surrounded by others who carried it so that we might stay somewhere near the right notes. Today, when my dear wife standing by me in church starts singing harmony, I am immediately lost and thrown for a musical loop nowhere near the melody.

So you will never hear me singing alone. If I think anyone might detect even a tiny sound of me growling along with Johnny Cash in the car, I clam right up. My song ends right then, in the embarrassment and shame of having my tuneless tones overheard.

There are many worse forms of shame. Our culture and media constantly shame some of us, especially women, with the message that our bodies are ugly and do not live up to standards of real beauty. Abuse of children generates shame that can last a lifetime and be passed on to future generations. The ethos of sports can shame youth who are not blessed with athletic ability. Fear of shame can permeate our lives.

In Psalm 25, David makes avoiding shame a major theme of his song. The psalm begins by asserting trust in God and then asking, “do not let me be put to shame.” Near the end, in verse 20, he asks once again, “let me not be put to shame.”

That ancient king of Israel was perhaps mostly concerned with political shame, the humiliation of being defeated by enemies. He probably had graphic mental images of how ancient armies treated conquered foes. Heads displayed as trophies on pikes. Prisoners paraded around to be mocked and beaten. Men, women and children put to work as slaves.

Defeat in battle was a shameful fate anyone would want to avoid, but it’s pretty far from our lives. You and I worry about stacks of bills, arguments with our spouses, and how to find decent medical care. We may have a little embarrassment about America’s image in the world, but we’re not too concerned yet about total defeat.

Yet world events and our Gospel text for today from Luke 21 should both remind us that degrading treatment by literal, physical enemies is not as remote a possibility as we might imagine. Christians throughout history have suffered shame and disgrace for their faith. Just before that Gospel lesson about being prepared, Jesus warned His followers to expect to be persecuted, taken prisoner, and treated with disrespect and cruelty. It still happens to Christians around the world. Jesus told us more is yet to come.

We want, then, to be prepared for such things. In Luke 21:34, Jesus exhorted us to “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly.” He told us in verse 36 there, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Our readings and songs at the beginning of Advent lead up to the joy and wonder of Christmas. But they also call us to remember that Jesus has not just come once as a baby, but will come yet again to our world as an awesome, and to some terrible, conquering King. In that thought we arrive at the ultimate, most terrifying shame of all. Not someone hearing us sing off key. Not painful degradation and torture by a hypothetical foe. But to stand before the Son of Man, Jesus our Savior who died for us, and to be found distracted, unprepared and unfaithful. That would be true shame.

That warning seems like a terrible burden to lay on a young person or on anyone. I remember well the warnings I received as a child growing up in a church where we talked often and vividly about the return of Christ. One warning was about our conduct. For any questionable activity to which we might be tempted, we were asked, “How would it feel if Jesus came back right then and found you doing that? Could you look your Savior in the eye without shame if He were to return at such a moment?”

It’s not such a bad question. It’s what Jesus Himself was driving at when He warned us not to let the day of His return “catch you unexpectedly.” If the thought of possible humiliation before Christ our Lord keeps honest figures on our tax returns, keeps angry words from leaving our mouths, keeps our pants zipped when they should be, then it’s not a bad thought, not bad at all. If the desire to avoid the worst possible spiritual shame motivates us to good behavior, then let it be so.

We can do more than merely contemplate the negative consequences of getting caught. As we look at the rest of Psalm 25, at what falls in between David’s pleas to God not to be put to shame, we see more than warnings about failure. There is a plan, a whole spiritual strategy for a well-lived life, a life of which one need not be ashamed.

The heart of David’s prayer to avoid shame is a deeper, more extensive plea to be instructed. Verse 4 and 5 ask,

“Make me know your ways, O Lord,
teach me your paths;
Lead me in your truth
and teach me.”

David knew that avoiding the shame of defeat is not a matter of being better prepared for war. It’s not a matter of good strategy for defense or having powerful weapons to carry the offense to his enemies. The king of Israel wanted to avoid shame by the spiritual expedient of trusting God and learning from His instruction.

David and his kingdom were threatened both externally and internally. In verse 19, he moans “Consider how many are my foes and with what violent hatred they hate me.” But in verse 8, David takes the humble course of seeking instruction. “Good and upright is the Lord;” he says, “therefore he instructs sinners in the way.”

The sinners God instructs were not David’s enemies. They were himself and his people. Verse 7 begs, “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions.” In verse 11 he prays, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.” David the king confessed his sins and asked for forgiveness. He humbled himself as a failure, as a man already shamed, to ask for help and guidance.

This psalm could be the constant form of our own spiritual lives if we want to avoid shame such as David fears, humiliation such as Jesus warns against. Confess our sins and constantly desire and pursue spiritual direction. That is the way to live a life that can stand at the end before the Son of Man and not be ashamed.

To be instructed by God in his ways is one of the major facets of our life together as a church. Look at the back of your bulletin and you will see that study is one of the four key ways we pursue our mission of growing faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Like David, we want to be taught, we want to learn, we want direction in the way of our Lord. It’s why we offer Sunday School to adults as well as children, and men’s and women’s and other fellowship groups for Bible study during the week.

I don’t want you to get the impression that the aim, either in the Psalm before us or in our mission statement, is merely “academic” in the typical sense of that term. When we gather and encourage each other to study the Bible, to learn the Christian faith, the goal is not just amassing an impressive collection of facts and theories. The goal is just what David is talking about here, to know and live God’s “way.” That’s how he phrases it over and over. “Make me know your ways;” “he instructs sinners in the way,” “teaches the humble his way.” David asks not just to be instructed, but again, over and over, to be led. In verse 5, he prays, “Lead me in your truth.”

On the other hand, I’m not saying spiritual learning should just be pragmatic. That would imply there are parts of Christian faith and doctrine that are mere theory as opposed to practice, merely head knowledge rather than heart knowledge, as it’s sometimes put. God’s way, God’s truth is more complex than that. The truth of God in which David asked to be instructed, to be led, is a living truth. God’s truth is a way, a way that includes both heart and head, both theory and practice, because it is a way of life.

The ultimate end of spiritual instruction is to follow a new way, to live differently, to be changed and transformed by what you are learning. To learn from God is to be guided, to walk on His paths, to move in His direction.

Whether your spiritual study is as practical as trying to find a way to get along with your family or as theoretical as discovering all the possible meanings of a single word in the Bible, it is meant by the Lord to be a living course of instruction. If you want to live well in your family you will need to grasp doctrine concerning what Jesus and His apostles said about husbands and wives and children and parents. If you want to really understand the meaning of a Bible word like “patience” or “faithfulness,” you will have to live out that meaning, do what that word says to do. And that’s not easy.

It’s so hard, in fact, to learn and live the ways of God, that you can sense a note of almost despair here at the end of David’s song. He says he is “lonely and afflicted” in verse 16. He talks about the troubles of his heart and his distress in verse 17. In verse 18 he prays for God to “Consider my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sins.” We’ve already mentioned the number of his enemies in verse 19. This life we are supposed to live, this instruction we are to learn, it’s not easy.

So our Lord gives us two great study aids as we aim to learn His ways. The first is the constant glorious gift of His grace. Despite all his sins, despite his failure and shame, David is confident that God will forgive him. When he falls down on the path, when he forgets the lessons he learns, the Lord will forgive him, pardon his guilt even though “it is great,” as he says in verse 11. God will pick him up and put him back on the way.

David’s perception of God’s readiness to forgive was a divinely inspired forecast of the grace available to everyone of us in Jesus Christ. Jesus died and rose so that we could have this new way of life we are trying to learn. His gave His life so that we might be as confident as David was in God’s grace. I John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins, and purify us from all unrighteousness.” When we sin, when the shame of failure overtakes us, Jesus will forgive us. We can be sure of it.

As we heard Paul write to the Thessalonians, the grace of Jesus will “strengthen your hearts in holiness so that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” Blameless and shameless. There is no shame in confessing and being forgiven. It’s the healing of shame, the end of it.

The other study aid we have addresses David’s loneliness in verse 16 of the psalm. In Jesus Christ, we come together in a great course of spiritual study. No one in Jesus is to learn alone how to live in God’s ways. We are meant to learn with and from each other. Even David, as solitary and alone as Psalm 25 sounds, acknowledges his place with others in the very last verse when he raises a prayer not just for himself for but his whole country, “Redeem Israel, O God, out of all its troubles!”

I told you I can’t sing well alone. Yet when I stand in a congregation or in a choir and I hear a song raised all around me, I can join in. It’s probably still not very pretty, but I can stay with the tune. I can enjoy the experience of singing.

I cannot be a Christian alone. None of us can. The end result of trying to learn God’s ways without help and companions will only be shame and humiliation. We catch the tune of Christ’s song from each other. We sing it best in unison or in harmony with other voices. God’s second aid to our instruction is the greatest of study groups. We learn to walk in the way of the Lord here together in a community of fellowship and love.

There is still one more aid we have. In seeking to learn God’s way, we have hope. It may feel hopeless for some of us to ever escape the shame of failure at school or work, the shame of a body type that doesn’t match our culture’s standards, but in Jesus Christ we are offered an unfailing hope that God will bring us at the end into His way, without shame.

We teased my mother about her singing. She was constantly frustrated with her inability to sing well. But she would always say that she was going to sing in heaven. The Lord would finally give her the beautiful voice she longed for. Then she would praise Him loud and long. That’s the kind of hope we all have as we strive not just to learn to sing, but to learn to live this Christian life to which we are called.

As David prays to be instructed in verse 5, he says “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation, for you I wait all day long.” And in verse 3, “No one who waits for you will ever be put to shame.” Wait for Jesus Christ. Hope in Him. Learn to walk in His way. Wait for Jesus. When His day dawns you will be able to greet that morning and sing without shame.

Amen.