Steadfast Love

Let go of your umbrella / 'Cause, darlin', I'm just trying to tell ya /
That there's always been a rainbow hangin' over your head

Songwriters: Shane Mcanally, Natalie Hemby, Kacey Musgraves
“Rainbow lyrics” © 351 Music, Songs Of Mv2, Tempo Investments/smack Hits, Wruckebucks Publishing, Rainbow Shoals Music

In the never-ending list of things I wasn’t taught in seminary, there were times when I was called to check out a plumbing problem. Check out? Look at. Standing there with hands on hips, saying, “Yep that’s a problem.” Not that I solved anything, as if I could. But I acknowledged it was an issue. Drains backing up, water on the floor, yep, that’s a problem. The door was blocked; don’t use these. The head of trustees was called. The custodian was called. Block the doors; don’t use them. We’ll call a plumber on Monday. OK, did that.

Did that. I didn’t fix anything; I just went and looked. It didn’t really help; it wasn’t much good. I didn’t get anything out of the trip—except maybe a metaphor. Backed-up drains spilling over, causing a problem, making a mess. Just close the door. That’s a good response, a common one anyway. Close the door. You go to visit neighbors; they show you around, but pass the closed door. “Don’t look in there,” they say. “It’s a mess.” We’re used to a mess; we’ve got our own closed doors.

Clogged plumbing, closed doors: I’m not really talking about housekeeping. You got that, right? Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Everyone needs a junk room; everyone gets clogged pipes now and again. It happens. But it is a mess, especially when the closed door is hiding unconfessed sin. The pipes are clogged with attacks on the sovereignty of God.

You should leave the “Selah” in there when you read Psalm 32, just for fun. No reason really, just a bonus. The truth is no one knows for sure what it means. Well, some know, have decided, chosen, but Hebrew scholars will tell you that we aren’t sure. It could be a word of praise. It could be a musical interlude, like a bridge connecting different parts of the psalm. A key change, maybe. Or it could be a pause. A breath.

I like that one. A breath, a place for the Spirit to blow through, a moment to sit back and remember that even reading scripture prayerfully is a dialogue. It’s not just what we think of it, what we hear in it; it is what God is saying to us. Listen. Breathe. Pause a moment before you leap in. “Speak, Lord, your servant hears!”

It’s good to stop and breathe before you clean out the pipes. It’s good to let the Spirit blow through before you open the door you want to keep closed. Selah. Let God in. The psalmist says that before remembering to breathe, before asking for God’s Spirit to blow through; there was only the weight of the brokenness. “While I kept silence.” How long can you keep silent? About the clog in the drain, or the clutter behind the door? How long can you pretend that it isn’t that bad? That it doesn’t drive a wedge between you and those you love? How long can you go hiding from the breath of God because you’re too embarrassed to admit you’ve fouled the air around you?

“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:1-2). The psalm doesn’t deal in metaphors. No clogged drains and locked doors. Transgression, sin, iniquity, deceit. Whew. Four different words for sin. There’s not a lot of wiggle room there, no place for equivocating. “Anything” seems to be the argument; anything that gets in the way of letting the breath of God blow through your life needs to be removed, needs to be lifted up. The happiness sought cannot be found outside the relationship with God, outside of full communion with the Spirit. Thinking that there is nothing to confess, nothing for which to pray, nothing that you can’t handle on your own is to choose to live under the weight that crushes bones. It is choosing to live in the desert, dry as a bone.

Breathe. And then open the door. “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not hide my iniquity: I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (32:5). There are four words for sin there. Did you notice? Four words in verse two, and four in verse five. I want to hand over everything—everything in my life, everything in my head, everything in my heart, everything in my mouth.

Sometimes I hear folks say ... no; let’s be honest, sometimes I say, “It’s not that bad;, I don’t need to bother God with that. When I commit a real sin, a really bad one, then I’ll go to God. I don’t want to waste God’s time on trivialities. I know plenty of worse sinners than I.” But what if it wasn’t the degree of the act committed? What if it was simply the clog? It's no big deal, but it's still a clog. We can live with that, can’t we? A small blockage won’t hinder us that much. It won’t slow us down.

Until it does and knocks us to our knees. The blood can’t rush through; we are dried up as though in the heat of summer. The air can’t come through, and we are groaning all night long trying to breathe because we’ve neglected the arteries of our relationships with God and one another. They’re the same, you know. Jesus was asked for the single law, the one most important. He gave two: Love God; love neighbor. They are woven together, he implied. The pipes that connect us and God are the same arteries that connect you and me, all of us. A clog between us gets in the way of the breath of God. A sin before God keeps me from loving you the way I need to.

That is why, once the psalmist breathes again, there is a call to the community at large. First the address is to God. Oh, that everyone knew what I’ve just remembered, what I’ve just experienced. All it takes, all it takes to be able to find a shady place in the heat of the burning sun, all it takes to find some dry ground when the waters of the world seem about to sweep you away, all it takes is a prayer to God. A prayer. A faithful prayer. A prayer of release and confession. A prayer of reconciliation and hope. A prayer of healing for healing the broken relationships, the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings that drove us apart. A gesture of community.

Don’t wait. The psalmist turns to the community. Don’t wait to be led around by the nose. Don’t wait for someone else to take the first step, to make the first gesture. You can live in the agony of brokenness and stubbornness if you want to. But it is no way to live, no way to breathe. You can pretend the pipes aren’t clogged and that sludge oozing across the floor is nothing to worry about. You can stand alone in the certainty that you were right all along, while the water rises over your shoes.

The prodigal had that choice. He came to the realization that things were clogged, that something got in the way of his dream of a better life. And now he was standing in a pig pen up to his knees in a plumbing nightmare. He could have kept tossing out the husks. But, coming to himself, he realized that was not the way to live. He had another option. He could reach out to a community, to a family—the same family he slapped in the face when he launched off on his own. He knew he wasn’t worthy; at least, that was the speech he rehearsed. He knew he didn’t deserve the love that showered down on him. His brother knew he didn’t deserve it, that’s for sure. And yet, there it was. Steadfast love surrounded him, even when he ran away, even when he thought only of himself and his immediate pleasure. There was something powerful, transformative, eternal that surrounded him, even though he didn’t deserve it. That is what grace really means.

He could have stayed in his certainty, in his self-centered fixation. Or he could have made a choice to live in joy, to turn around and wrap himself in the steadfast love that supported him, even when he didn’t realize it or particularly want it. He could have chosen to raise his vision enough to see the rainbow in the sky.

You can choose to live in joy. Happy are those. Isn’t that what we want? To be happy? Here’s the formula: Heal the breech. Clear the clog. Open the door. Say, “I’m sorry,” even when you aren’t sure you’re wrong. Say you’re sorry for being misunderstood, for being mule-headed, for letting the clog continue to build. And when the relationships are restored, you can shout for joy. You can laugh again. You can breathe deeply at last in the steadfast love that surrounds you.