I'll Never Leave You Alone

Text: Psalm 119:129-136
Other texts: 1 Kings 3:5-12

Young king Solomon prayed for wisdom.

I am only a little child, he prayed. I know nothing. I do not know how to go out or how to go in. Yet I am a man of great responsibility. How can I govern the people without wisdom? Where will that wisdom come from? Solomon prayed. God answers Solomon’s prayer. I do now, according to your request, give you wisdom and a mind that can discern one thing from another and to understand what is right to do.

There are two fundamental questions we ask of God in prayer. They have to do with the nature of our being and life on earth. Who am I? and What should I do?

We are nomads, wandering about in the time given to us on earth. We are blessed with a sense of possibilities and potential. We are aware of temptations. We remember mistakes and successes. We see choices; we long to make the right ones, for our sake and for the sake of others. What should I do? What should I do right this minute? What should I do with my life? We understand the psalmist, the writer of psalm 119, when he prays to God: I open my mouth and pant because I long for your commandments. What should I do?

The psalm, psalm 119, is 176 verses long. It is divided into 22 sections, and each section is eight verses long. The entire psalm is a song of praise for God’s commandments, or God’s instructions, or God’s guidance, or God’s teachings. The law, in other words. This psalm is an ode to God’s order.

Lutherans talk sometimes as if the law—with a capital “L”—of the Old Testament is a peculiar and onerous burden that Jesus freed everyone from. But that is not how Jesus described it, or Paul, who spoke so much about it. Or how the psalmist sings about it. The law makes sense of the world and our place in it. It is a sign of God’s interest in guiding us, helping us know what we should do.

If you drive from here to Denver, at some point you’ll have to cross Nebraska. Western Nebraska is very flat and not very populated. The highway to Denver, which is just flat pavement on the flat land, runs straight and true. At night there is nothing to distinguish the road from the land. Nothing except a long white line that the road department has graciously painted on each side of the road. That line cannot keep you from driving off the road into someone’s field. That line has no control over you. That line is there for your benefit only. That line is instruction, you might say, or guidance. Or you could even say the line is a commandment, which is in the form of a promise: if you pay attention to me, it might say, you will keep yourself alive.

When your word is opened, the psalm says, it gives light. The law is a gift. It is a commandment in the form of a promise. If you’d like to know how to keep yourself alive, it might say, pay attention.

God’s teachings free us. They free us from having to figure everything out for ourselves. Just like the white lines free us from having to figure out, mile after mile in the dark, where the edge of the road is.

That does not mean that the teachings, the law, is static, unchanging, or complete. Landscapes change, roads are widened or abandoned, lines fade. The law as the psalm praises it is not merely something written down forever. It is part of God’s ongoing guidance. The ongoing nature of the law means that God has not abandoned us to ourselves. Which is a good thing, since we are clearly no smarter now than our spiritual ancestors were.

The law does more than keep us on track. It can define the track. Cambridge is a city known to be friendly to bicycles (at least compared to most other cities). Cambridge paints lines on the roads just like Nebraska does. The lines that Cambridge paints define bike paths. The bike paths don’t really exist, in a way. They are creations of the law. The law creates new spaces out of old ones. Places of sanctuary, for example, like the sabbath, which is a day carved out by law from otherwise undifferentiated time. Or startling behaviors, like forgiving your enemies or giving all you have to the poor, which are habits separated from the ordinary.

Not everyone wishes to keep a day of sabbath, or to fight for justice for the poor and disenfranchised, or to forgive others. If the words of God are a gift, then not everyone will value them. Those who do value them, who consider them to be something worth obeying, or more likely even something worth attempting to obey, define themselves apart from others.

Jesus tells his disciples at one point: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples [Jn 13:34]. The disciples of Jesus are not the one who are theologically correct. They are the ones who do what Jesus says to do.

The writer of the psalm says: Your decrees are wonderful, therefore I obey them with all my heart. But in a sense he has it backward. His obedience to the decrees are what makes them wonderful. He has declared himself to be a decree-obeyer. And he thinks that is great. He is someone under the law, as Paul would later say. Following the law tells him who he is.

To follow Jesus is to take what he says seriously. To consider that for us, Jesus is the way to the answer to our questions of identity and behavior. That Jesus is our guidance, instruction, and illumination.

What make this psalm so powerful is the way the psalmist greets the law: with passion, trust, gratitude, and in the end, compassion for others. For followers of Christ, this greeting is for Jesus and his teachings. For wisdom and to discern one thing from another and to understand what is right to do, we turn to Jesus. Who we trust to teach us how to go out and how to go in.