Psalm 53 | Wayfarer

God scattered the bones of those who attacked you;
you put them to shame, for God despised them.
Psalm 53:5b (NIV)

Wendy and I really enjoy being fans. For us, the fun is in being loyal to our teams, following them, knowing the players, following the drama, cheering for them, and experiencing what ABC’s Wide World of Sports used to describe each week as “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

A few years ago we found ourselves feeling the emptiness in the depth of our Iowa winter. January through March always feels like a slog, but we realized that it was made worse for us because our Vikings’ season was over and it would be April before our Cubs’ would begin their annual campaign. For whatever reason, the NBA has never tripped our trigger. So, we decided it was time to join our son-in-law Clayton and give the English Premier League a shot.

We knew that for us the fun is in following a team, so we began researching the various teams in a search for the team to whom we would pledge our loyalty. It’s surprising how many resources there are on the internet for Americans trying to choose a Premier League team. In the end, we chose to become fans of Liverpool FC (Football Club). And, as silly as it sounds, the clincher for us was the song.

One of the endearing things about Premier League is the singing. During most pre-covid matches when the stands are packed you’ll hear the crowd singing. Not just a specific moment in the match, like singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame in the middle of the 7th Inning. Premier League fans often sing themselves hoarse through the entire match. There are typically different songs fans have for different players, and teams typically adopt a theme song.

Liverpool’s theme song is Gerry and the Pacemaker’s You’ll Never Walk Alone which also happens to be a song from the Broadway Musical Carousel. Wendy and I discovered this fact in our research and then pulled up a YouTube video of the Liverpool crowd singing it before a match. We got goosebumps, and it sealed the deal. Two Liverpool fans were born.

So, you might be wondering to yourself, “Where on earth are you going with this?” Well, if you’ve followed my blog and/or podcast for anything length of time you know that I’m fond of saying that God’s language is metaphor, and metaphor is layered with meaning. The song You’ll Never Walk Alone is a great example.

For many people like Wendy and me, the song has been forever tied to the musical Carousel. A teenager growing up in the early 1960s might never have known it was from a Broadway musical, but the version by Gerry and the Pacemakers might have tremendous emotional ties to a crush they had on a boy or girl, dancing cheek-to-cheek at a school dance, or listening with friends on a crackly AM car radio as you scooped the loop. Then Liverpool takes the same song and it becomes an anthem of solidarity, loyalty, and community for fans of their football club around the world.

For me, the most interesting thing about today’s chapter, Psalm 53, is that it is virtually identical to Psalm 14. If you put them side-by-side you’ll notice that it’s the same song, but verse 5 is different. Scholars believe that the nation took David’s original and co-opted it after a national victory over armies who had sought to destroy them as in the story found in 2 Chronicles 20 when they were unexpectedly attacked by the army of Edom. When David wrote the song to mean one thing during his life and his generation, but a subsequent generation took the same song, the same lyrics, and made it about another thing.

In the quiet this morning, it has me thinking about something I’ve frequently observed in my perpetual journey through the Great Story. Something that had little or no meaning for me thirty years ago might suddenly be powerfully important for me today at this waypoint on Life’s road. Things that meant one thing to me then might take on a whole new layer of meaning for me now. I’m so grateful to my mentors who taught me at the beginning of my spiritual journey that reading and studying the Great Story was not a one-and-done deal. “On it you shall meditate both day and night,” says Joshua 1:8, the very first verse I memorized when I was 15. And, that’s what I’ve tried to do, and it’s made an unfathomable difference in both my spiritual journey and my life journey.

The Great Story meets me where I am every morning. A verse, or chapter, or passage can help me frame my past, make sense of my present, and direct my course for the future all at the same time.

Thanks for walking with me this morning and reminding me that “I’ll never walk alone.”

Go Liverpool! 🙂

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 53

But no, all have turned away;
all have become corrupt.
No one does good,
not a single one!
Psalm 53:3 (NLT)

Having just come through an intense political season and subsequent national election, I have been spending a lot of time mulling over issues of government. Bear with me here. This is not a partisan political rant but a meditation on spiritual principle. Beyond political agendas of the two main parties, my thoughts have been reaching deeper to the system of government itself. The American experiment was, in many ways, unique when our founding fathers hammered out and crafted our current system of government. Not to get all high school government class on you this morning, but I’m struck at how the framers of our constitution understood the corruption of humanity. They acknowledged that without checks and balances, the system would quickly fall to corruption. By separating power and spreading it out between branches of government, between houses of congress, and between the states and the federal entities, there was a greater likelihood that one person or one government entity could not have too much power and grab control of the entire system (which history reveals is always the eventuality).

What the founders of the United States acknowledged was what God’s Message calls the sinful nature and what theologians refer to as the depravity of humanity. Every person who has watched over or parented small children has witnessed and experienced this. Given to him or herself, a little tike will hit their rival, rip the toy they want out of another person’s hands and then lie about doing it. They will hide their vegetables under the table or feed them to the dog. As we get older we hopefully learn that these behaviors are wrong. However, my personal experience and my dealings with other human beings leads me to believe that as adults we just get better at hiding our true nature, excusing our failings, shifting blame and getting away with it.

Prevailing thought in our culture is that we are all basically good and are given to doing the right thing. Therefore, given a little effort, we can reach a level of moral excellence acceptable to God. At the very least, we should be able to tip the scales slightly to the side of “good” and earn a pass on Judgement Day. My journey through God’s Message reveals a very different picture. I find God telling us that despite Herculean efforts to overcome our corrupt nature and moral shortcomings, we will instead find ourselves to be Sisyphus who just gets the stone to the top of the hill only to find that it rolls right back down again. We can never achieve a level of moral perfection necessary to be found innocent.

Which is why I find that even our system of government with all of its checks and balances still slides slowly into the muck of corrupt dealings, power grabs, deceptive advertising, pork barrel spending, blame shifting, and inside trading.

God help us. Despite our best efforts we still fall short.

We need a Savior.