I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore. (NRSV)
This is my favorite psalm. I have read and mulled it over so many times that it is almost second nature for me to draw from its rich theological statement about God when times are difficult. This is a psalm designed for worship – to be used by God’s people through song and prayer. A community without Psalm 121 near to its heart is a group of people in danger. Yet, with it, there is a continual sense of security, confidence, and hope.
Psalms are meant to be spoken aloud and repeated. So, here is another version:
I look to the hills!
Where will I find help?
It will come from the Lord,
who created the heavens
and the earth.
The Lord is your protector,
and he won’t go to sleep
or let you stumble.
The protector of Israel
doesn’t doze
or ever get drowsy.
The Lord is your protector,
there at your right side
to shade you from the sun.
You won’t be harmed
by the sun during the day
or by the moon at night.
The Lord will protect you
and keep you safe
from all dangers.
The Lord will protect you
now and always
wherever you go. (CEV)
This beautiful majestic psalm can be used for any and every occasion. So, I often use it within hospital visits, counseling in a wide array of situations, and for my own personal edification. It seems to me that one cannot possibly overuse this psalm. The psalm was originally used for ascending the hill into Jerusalem, anticipating meeting with God. Just like a lover who looks forward to meeting his beloved and thinking about how wonderful she is, so the psalmist looks with adoring affection on the God he is about to encounter.
Here is yet another version of this wonderful psalm:
I look up to the mountains—
does my help come from there?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth!
He will not let you stumble;
the one who watches over you will not slumber.
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
never slumbers or sleeps.
The Lord himself watches over you!
The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade.
The sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon at night.
The Lord keeps you from all harm
and watches over your life.
The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go,
both now and forever. (NLT)
The psalm is rich with a theology of grace, watch care, and loving attention. This is a God who is powerful and merciful, a God able to help and desiring to do so. In a world which seems so often distant and unaffected by the divine, this is a psalm to utter repeatedly in every situation of life so that the truth of the Lord is grafted deep into the soul. In each unwanted circumstance the psalm can be spontaneously used as an immediate prayer, and with every anticipated event it can provide the words to address the most pressing of needs. Let the words resonate within you as people created in the image of God, connecting with him on both the cerebral and visceral levels of your life in this last version:
I will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even forevermore. (NKJV)
O God, do not be silent!
Do not be deaf.
Do not be quiet, O God.
Don’t you hear the uproar of your enemies?
Don’t you see that your arrogant enemies are rising up?
They devise crafty schemes against your people;
they conspire against your precious ones.
“Come,” they say, “let us wipe out Israel as a nation.
We will destroy the very memory of its existence….”
O my God, scatter them like tumbleweed,
like chaff before the wind!
As a fire burns a forest
and as a flame sets mountains ablaze,
chase them with your fierce storm;
terrify them with your tempest.
Utterly disgrace them
until they submit to your name, O Lord.
Let them be ashamed and terrified forever.
Let them die in disgrace.
Then they will learn that you alone are called the Lord,
that you alone are the Most High,
supreme over all the earth. (NLT)
The psalms are the church’s prayer book. Many of the psalms are laments and many of them are worshipful songs of praise. Then there are the “imprecatory” (pronounced im-PRECK-a-tory) psalms. To “imprecate” means to invoke evil upon someone; it is to pronounce a curse. The reason for the imprecatory psalm is that it is not any person’s place to engage in revenge or retaliation. Instead, for people who are genuinely caught in the cross-hairs of evil and have sinful persons dogging them, prayer is their most effective recourse.
Sometimes you must tell it like it is. There is a time to do your best in putting up a good face and dealing with people who do not ever stop gossiping, slandering, and trying to get their way.
There is also a time to call such behavior “evil” and cry out to God for help.
There are many folks who consider imprecatory psalms a problem because of their detailed expressions of imprecation. Yet, such psalms refuse to put a positive spin on malevolent motives, wicked words, and destructive actions. Desperate people utter desperate prayers. Their unflinching sense of injustice will not allow them to sugarcoat the villainous plans of corrupt people. Evil is never toppled with tepid prayers from wimpy worshipers. Rather, nefarious agendas are thwarted in the teeth of specific, focused, and intense prayers directed with spiritual precision to the very core of diabolical forces.
We need not be shy about being real with God, even with praying imprecatory prayers. There really are people in this world, maybe even in your own life, that have malicious intent against you or others. Our job is not personal revenge, but to entrust ourselves to the God who fights for the poor, the oppressed, and the needy against the arrogant and the powerful.
Let your prayers reflect your life.
Along with psalms of praise lifted during times of celebration, so imprecatory psalms are not to be ignored but need to be uttered equally loud as prayers to almighty God in seasons of desperate evil. If you have a gut feeling deep down that wicked people are running amok, then use this psalm as a prayer against the darkness which seeks to envelop the earth.
Jesus Christ will build his church and the gates of hell shall not overcome it (Matthew 16:18). The picture Jesus portrayed is one of faithful believers equipped with righteousness and justice storming the gates of hell, not shying away from it. Baked within the Lord’s words were the promise that evil atrocities will not have the day – that God’s people will not be destroyed or overwhelmed because of demonic and satanic power.
There is a time to flee and then there is a time to engage. I am suggesting that the chief way of mitigating evil is to punch it in the mouth with imprecatory psalms prayed with righteous flavor and focused directly against the powers of this present darkness. Why prayer of all things in dealing with evil?…
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12, NKJV)
Spiritual problems require spiritual implements to solve. And the tool of imprecatory psalms is a major way of not only pushing back the dark forces of this world but is the means of spiritual assertiveness against all forms of heinous acts and acerbic words from depraved people and evil systems.
God’s wrath is an expression of God’s love.
God is not okay with evil taking root in the lives and institutions of humanity. Prayer is our privilege of coming to the God who upholds justice and righteousness. For if God is for us, who can be against us?
God Almighty, may you hear me in the day of my trouble and send help from your holy sanctuary and strengthen my faith. Breathe your Holy Spirit into me and inspire me with a passion for goodness and truth, justice, and righteousness. Lord Jesus be present with me in your risen power and protect me from harm and from all that would hinder your healing presence in this world. You overcame the forces of Satan, redeemed the world, then ascended to the Father. May you be with me and within me; before me and behind me; on my right and on my left; above me and beneath me; and around me always. Amen.
Jesus touches the leper, a mosaic from an early Byzantine Church
When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help.“Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am also a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you: I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. (NIV)
Maybe you, like me, have had your computer pick up a nasty virus that hijacks every file and function you possess. For me, the most frustrating thing about those events is that there is nothing I can do by myself to fix it or make it better. I must humble myself and ask some computer geek to get into my system and take care of the problem. It feels weird looking at my screen and having somebody I do not know working inside my personal computer. But if I fail to get help, my computer would be worthless – unless I let someone with authority fix the blasted thing.
Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Since he has authority over everything, we must live our lives in submission to his will and way. Only through humble resignation to Christ will we experience the healing and deliverance we seek.
Jesus preached his famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and taught the people as one who had authority. In that Sermon, Jesus laid out the values of God’s kingdom: humility, sorrow over sin, meekness, purity, mercy, and peacemaking. Now, in today’s Gospel lesson, we see the power and values of God’s kingdom evidenced and expressed in two stories of healing and deliverance.
The world needs saving, and that is exactly what Jesus is up to. Jesus Christ’s authority is total, and comes from his moral authority, as the very embodiment of the Beatitudes he taught. Grace always gets the last word, as Jesus healed without showing favoritism nor discrimination.
In the first story, Jesus used his authority to heal and transform a leper. Leprosy was a feared disease in the ancient world. There was no known cure, and lepers were forced to live apart from everyone else. The Old Testament book of Leviticus says that a leper must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out “unclean! unclean!” (Leviticus 13:45-46). Lepers were the ultimate outsiders.
A leper came to Jesus with a humble profession of faith: “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.” It was a clear case of genuine need, and poverty of spirit. Jesus responded by doing the unthinkable: He touched him. In a great and wonderful reversal, Jesus did not become unclean by touching the leper but instead the leper was made clean.
If we want the world to be saved and to follow the way of Jesus, then we will emulate our Lord by touching the world. It will not do for us to stand afar off from the outsiders of our community and avoid marginalized people. It will not do for us just to provide a service without having to touch someone. Authentic Christian ministry communicates love through contact and identification with others.
Eleven centuries after Jesus walked the earth, another man, Francis, met a leper on the road as he journeyed toward Assisi. “Though the leper caused him no small disgust and horror, he nonetheless, got off the horse and prepared to kiss the leper. But when the leper put out his hand as though to receive something, he received money along with a kiss” (Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano). Francis did what seemed humanly impossible because he was filled with the love and compassion of Christ. The love of Jesus allows us to touch others with compassionate care, especially to those who have been rejected and mistreated.
The Centurion Begs Jesus to Heal his Servant, and The Lamp of Faith, from St. Matthew Catholic Church in Detroit, Michigan.
The second story was equally eye-popping and unbelievable to the people in Christ’s day. Jesus used his authority to heal and transform a Gentile. Again, we see the Beatitudes expressed toward a Roman Centurion who felt unworthy to even have the Lord Jesus come into his house. Furthermore, the Centurion’s profession of faith amazed even Jesus: “Just say the word,” he said in recognition of Christ’s authority, which is big enough to heal without even being present. Centurions were the backbone of the Roman military machine and hated by the Jews. Yet, Jesus the Jew not only responded to the Centurion’s request, he affirmed this Gentile’s faith as greater than any Jew.
Grace answers to need, and not to smug self-confidence. The Roman Centurion did not ask for healing for himself but for his servant, and Jesus listened and answered. The Centurion neither demanded nor claimed healing but came in a spirit of humility and asked with confidence that Jesus could heal his servant if he wanted to. The Centurion simply threw himself on God’s mercy. So, Jesus upheld the Centurion as a model of faith for us all.
Not only did Jesus affirm the Centurion’s faith, he gave a solemn warning to the self-righteous: Their lack of humility and genuine faith would land them outside the kingdom. In another great reversal, the insiders will become the outsiders, and the outsiders become the insiders. The independently proud did not experience healing and transformation because they did not even know they were sin sick. They saw no need for an intervention by Jesus because they already had their righteous deeds to boast about. They were more concerned about looking good and saving face and did not perceive their own unworthiness.
The self-righteous approach to handling problems and difficult situations is to come up with good ideas and clever strategies, relying on sheer personal effort and willpower. Prayer may or may not happen after the plans are laid, and there is no sense of beginning with beseeching God. Our delusional thoughts of personal autonomy only separate us from the grace of God we so desperately need.
There is a spiritual dimension to every situation and trouble we face – including sickness. If we only examine the medical end of physical problems, we may be dealing with symptoms instead of the root issue that plagues us. The Apostle James said:
Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you have sinned, you will be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:13-16, MSG)
Jesus healed and transformed outsiders. The followers of Christ must constantly ask: Who are the outsiders among us? Do we care about strangers? Are we willing to touch aliens and immigrants? Will we intercede in prayer for those who are foreign to us? Will we search for and pursue those on the periphery of society? Do we believe the risen and ascended Jesus can and will heal, deliver, and transform people?
Jesus cannot be domesticated into some figurehead that suits our desires and conforms to our ideas about how things ought to be. Jesus is portrayed in these stories as eager to heal, wanting to show grace to the least and the lowly among society. May we participate in word and deed the Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one. Amen. (Matthew 6:9-13, NLT)
Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins. (NIV)
This psalm is the miserable cry of a nobody from nowhere. Yet, because the Lord is attentive to the righteous, the cry penetrates heaven and is received. The psalmist only wants to serve God with a new beginning and fresh obedience – and he will wait and hope for liberation from his misery.
We typically use the term “hope” in a wishful thinking sort of way. That is because we are not quite sure if things will shake-out like we want. But biblical hope is not wishful thinking. Rather, it is a confident expectation of what is to come. Hope is like anticipating the seasons. In the dead of winter when it is bitter cold with little sunshine, we hope, and not wish, for Spring because we know it is coming. It might come in early March, maybe in late April. The trees will bud, the grass will turn green, and the temperature will warm – you can bet your britches on it.
This old world might be messed up and broken right now, but it will not always be this way. Because of the person and work of Jesus Christ, there is hope, the confident expectation that deliverance from sin, death, and hell will be fully realized. We are saved from the bondage of sin through the cross and resurrection of Christ. We are delivered into an inheritance which can never perish, spoil, or fade – kept in heaven for us until the time is right. Meanwhile, we hope with the confident expectation of Christ’s coming again.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. (1 Peter 1:3-6, NIV)
Until our hope is fully realized, we cry out to God and watch for his deliverance. Regarding our salvation, it is accurate to say that we have been saved (from the realm of sin); we are currently being saved (through being made holy in this life); and, we will be saved (when Jesus returns). Liberation from both our personal struggles and the evil machinations of this world is an ongoing process that will only reach its complete fulfillment at the end of the age.
That is why we experience such a weird existence on this earth, a strange amalgam of good and bad. We not only get mixed messages from the world, but also internally, within our souls, we experience the struggle between right and wrong. Outwardly, we suffer in all kinds of earthly grief from others who do not understand us. Inwardly, we have the silent pain and terrible wrestling of wanting to forgive but desiring revenge; of seeking to be gracious but seething with anger; of looking to express kind words but having hate speech blurt out instead.
It will not always be this way. We have a living hope. Jesus has risen from death. He is alive. He is coming back to judge the living and the dead. He will take us to be with him forever. It is the confident expectation of unhindered relationship, with no obstacles of difficult people, and without any systemic evil from organizational structures giving us a hard time.
Hope is real. It is just as real as anything we will ever know this side of heaven. We might not always find what we are looking for in this life, yet, in the next life, we shall find the life that is truly life in Jesus Christ, who is our hope. Until then, we are to wait neither idly nor passively. Instead, it is sage for us to do the following:
Occupy the time. One of the best ways to avoid becoming anxious while waiting is to do what we are on this earth to do: be a blessing to others.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited…. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-16, 21, NIV)
Don’t try too hard. Trying to use willpower to squelch anxiety will only prompt even greater anxiety. Accept that we will have to wait and that we are not privy to God’s timetable.
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. (1 Peter 3:7, NLT)
Wait with other people. Waiting with others through talking about our shared hope helps redeem our time in the here and now.
Be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:7, NLT)
Think of patience as compassion. Becoming impatient about something in life is entirely normal and happens to all of us. Our impatience is a stress response to a situation. Learning to be more patient is a way of being more compassionate to ourselves and others.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. (Colossians 3:12, NIV)
Lord God Almighty, your hope arises with each dawn, pushing back the rubble of our lives. Each new day reminds us of your grace as you paint hope across the sky. Into the deafening cry of hopelessness, you whisper love that catches and holds us. There is no end, just new beginnings. No finish, just new starts. Into your resurrection we follow you into hope. You are alive in the world and in us. So, we carry your hope within our spirits always. Help us to lift our eyes and experience Christ’s resurrection hope arise in our lives through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
