Lectio Divina on Psalm 122
To learn the process of Lectio Divina see this post.
Lectio Divina, or “sacred reading”, is a powerful meditative process for allowing the Lord to speak to us through scripture. It asks us to quiet our hearts and minds in order to immerse ourselves in the words, so that God may reveal something to us that can meet our stories in the here-and-now.
Each Friday morning I gather with some people from our community to center ourselves on a psalm, meditate on what the Lord might be saying, and use those revelations to intercede for the Church and the world around us. It has been a discipline now for six and a half years that has fed my soul in numerous ways. From time to time I will be sharing some of what I feel God speaking to me, in the hopes it might encourage you in this season.
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I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
Our feet are standing
in your gates, Jerusalem.
The irony is not lost on me that we are in a situation, because of the pandemic, where we cannot physically “go to the house of the Lord”. The first line of this psalm reminds me that we are in something of an exile, or as I heard it framed recently, a “biological persecution”. We cannot gather in the way we have, and I mourn that reality. Yet I’m also reminded that God’s house is not simply a building, it is a posture of awareness - all of creation is His temple, and we are His attendants. We can lament the circumstance we find ourselves in, the dissatisfaction of what communal worship looks like right now, but we can also press in with greater fervor to pursue what is still ultimately true.
I am also struck by the response to the call to worship - joy! I have been contemplating many of the things we are called to in obedience recently (worship, generosity, encouragement, and so on), and how we often hold them as legalistic obligations. “I stubbornly rolled my eyes and huffed and puffed when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’”. Where have we gone wrong when we see entering God’s house, worshipping and adoring Him, as an obligation rather than a joy? When generosity is a box to tick and not overflowing gratitude in action? When our active participation in life in the City of God is a resigned sigh instead of a cultivation of awe and wonder? I know I must examine my own heart in this regard.
Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.
That is where the tribes go up—
the tribes of the Lord—
to praise the name of the Lord
according to the statute given to Israel.
There stand the thrones for judgment,
the thrones of the house of David.
To worship God is to be in close proximity with His people. Again, there is a painful irony, one we should lament, that we cannot be close to one another right now. Closeness is a central reality of being the church. Online gatherings, Zoom conversations, Slack threads and text messages all fall short of God’s ultimate desire for His people, and how we are designed to be with one another. Whether we readily admit it or not, we are creatures built for closeness. To be in God’s family is to be shoulder-to-shoulder with one another, come what may. We are grounded in Him, bound together in worship of Him. Yet God is not so naive to believe that we will all simply get along inside his holy city…
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
Where diverse people gather, there will be conflict. One of the great lessons of my life has been to understand the difference between peacekeeping (maintaining the illusion of togetherness through avoidance) and peacemaking (pressing through conflict faithfully in order to truly be together). The final stance from this psalm reminds me of Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:14 - “For [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…” God is making a family out of strangers, and that project inevitably will bring with it tension. In a way, the community of God is a place of suffering, as we bump up against people that, in the world from which we have been saved, we are indifferent or hostile towards based on human value systems. Closeness reveals our prejudices and over-protective natures.
So we must actively pray for peace, and not be surprised when we are uncomfortable because of who stands next to us in God’s presence. We can’t manufacture peace on our own, we need God to grant us His peace through His Holy Spirit. Only then can we be secure and prosperous as we worship and work out our salvation.
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Questions for Meditation:
Do I enter into worship of God and my place among his people with overflowing joy, or is it an obligation? How does my attitude to worship and generosity affect my ability to lay claim to awe and wonder?
How do I perceive those who I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with in His city? What has the gift of closeness done for me in understanding Who God really is?
Am I actively praying for peace within my own community? Am I seeking opportunities to be an assertive peacemaker, not just an avoidant peacekeeper?