Tuesday Lent Three

“Hear my teaching, O my people; *

incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable; *

I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.”

Psalm 78, Tuesday Lent Three, Morning Prayer, the Daily Office Book, Year One

These are the opening lines of Psalm 78 and what follows in the rest of the Psalm is basically a retelling of the history of Israel from the Exodus until David’s kingship. “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.” The psalmist is calling the reader to move beyond a literal understanding of scripture into the realm of metaphor as a means to understand the mysteries of life, our lives as individuals and as communities. I believe the Spirit of truth which pulses through the Bible is the one of perpetual journey, of the pilgrimage that is life, the pilgrimage which describes the freedom in God as being liberation from our obsessive thoughts and material obsessions (idols), as being set free by God’s love, having our hearts liberated and our minds transformed. The story of the Bible is liberation, from the past into the ever emerging of the future by the presence of Christ now. The forgiving love of Christ is always now surging forward in the hope and joy of lives directed and filled by eschatological compassion.

Where are you in the parable? How are you Israel, how are you ever wrestling against the freedom of God’s promise and love? How are you to be liberated, forgiven? What do you need to set free and be freed from?