Psalms 88
OT Reading: Genesis 42.1-25
NT Reading: 1 Corinthians 10.1-24 Text: God is faithful (1 Cor 10.13)
The author of tonight’s Psalm faces the darkness of death without the hope of resurrection. He cannot imagine that God’s wondrous works might be known in the dark. Yet even in his despair he knows that he can rely on God to be faithful to his people, at least in this life. The story of Joseph and his brothers reminds us, as it may have reminded him, that God is able to work his purposes out in the most unlikely and unpropitious circumstances. The sons of Jacob had sold their tiresome young brother into slavery. Now the family was on the brink of disaster as year after year of drought emptied their barns and left them with nothing to eat. But God had promised Jacob that his seed would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and he would keep his promise, despite the evil they had done in first attempting to kill Joseph, and then selling him into slavery. Hearing that there was grain in Egypt, they went to buy some. By now, Joseph had risen to high rank, controlling the grain supply. By God’s providence, and his own steadfast faith, he was in a position to become the instrument of God’s loving care for his family.
If sometimes we need to be reminded – when the darkness has overwhelmed us – that God is faithful, at other times we may need to be reminded not to take his mercy and loving kindness for granted. Heinrich Heine, the German wit and poet, is alleged to have quipped on his deathbed that God would forgive him; that’s what He does. Dieu me pardonnera, c’est son metier. Paul would not have been amused. In his letter to the Corinthians he reminds them that all the Israelites passed safely through the Red Sea with Moses. They all ate the manna in the wilderness. They all drank water from the rock which he struck with his staff. But that was not enough to save them when they started taking God’s loving care for granted and behaving as if they could ignore him altogether. Some members of the church in Corinth had espoused a form of Wisdom worship which was so conveniently esoteric that they too could do more or less as they pleased in their private lives. One aspect of this was the eating of food which had been sacrificed in temples dedicated to other gods. Paul accepts that in itself such food is not harmful. So the Corinthian Christians do not need to be unduly suspicious about the origins of every piece of meat sold in the market. But joining their pagan friends for a meal in the temple where the meat would certainly have been offered to the pagan god concerned was another matter altogether – not least since it might appear to others that they were in some sense honouring the god to whom the sacrifice had been made.
Does this have lessons for us? Like the Corinthians we live in a society which is rooted in other values. For example, in an economic system which relies heavily on market forces to bring us cheap food and clothing, we may well benefit from practices that exploit the poor or perhaps cause children to give up their education in order to work long hours for little or no remuneration. What Paul is saying is, we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it if we cannot know, or have no choice, but if we do know that a particular company or supermarket is not behaving ethically, then we are complicit in the worship of the false gods of the secular market if we knowingly eat and drink and wear their products.
Heine was right, up to a point. God will forgive us, that is what he does. But just because we can rely always and forever on a loving and caring God, that doesn’t mean that we can sit lightly to His values as we go about our daily lives. We are called to love our neighbour just as God has loved us, and that has serious implications for our behaviour. Paul urges us in the strongest possible terms to flee from the worship of the false idols which dominate the society in which we live. But he also assures us that because God is faithful, we will not be tested beyond our strength. If we put our trust in him, as Jacob and Joseph and Paul did, we shall never be abandoned. Moreover, we shall know – as the Psalmist could not know – that God will continue to hold us in his loving arms even when we have passed through the darkness of death into the light of eternal life.