Praying the Psalms, Tying the Knot and Carrying the Cross.

Praying the Psalms, Tying the Knot and Carrying the Cross.

Good Morning Friends,

The Psalms do not exactly fit the way people pray today any more than people grasp the full context of taking up a cross and the spiritual nature of marriage. We do not wear prayer shawls with tied tassels, though their image does kind of tie things together if the knots form a cross. So today in honor of these images of our faith we imagine the power in Praying the Psalms, Tying the Knot and Carrying the Cross.

Scripture: Be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:12

[Jesus] said to [the crowd and his disciples], “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Mark 8:34 (NRSV)

So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

Mark 5:24-28

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there.  One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.  When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Acts 16:13-15 (NIV)

 I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.

Psalm 61:4 (NIV)

Message: I read a devotional today about making string crosses and I thought how cool, but my thinking did not stop there. This led me to contemplate Jewish prayer shawls and the possibility that Paul actually made them. Ancient prayer practices were designed to deepen the understanding of the relationship between the body and prayer.  In Biblical times Jewish men and perhaps women as well wore a garment called a Talith or prayer shawl. The word Talith is made up of two words: tal meaning tent and ith meaning little. These little tents were prayer shawls… prayer closets that substituted for the tent of the meeting. Jewish men would pull them over their head forming a tent…their own private sanctuary for prayer, chanting and singing. Kind of reminds me of crawling under the covers with a flashlight as a little kid. Many have suggested that Paul did not make tents for people to live in but made prayer shawls with tassels and knots prescribed in Numbers 15:38 and Deuteronomy 22:12.
Christians do not typically use prayer shawls, and Jesus certainly did not need one. Still, I imagine that Jesus and Paul prayed and sung the Psalms, and had them in mind as a way of showing how prayer can be connected with other activities. They did wear something. At Moorings we have choir robes that are blue and white. I am pretty sure that Lydia in the Bible is connected to the dye for those blue cords in Jewish prayer shawls and maybe that heritage helped to set the tradition of having blue and white choir robes. Well maybe that is a stretch but still we do pray when we sing. Of course we do not even know for sure if Paul made prayer shawls. That may have been part of the rabbinic development years later. But he certainly may have inspired them and had access to the technology to form the foundation of them. I do not have any certainty on this. Of course all this conjecture is just a hunch of the way images and history converge to connect to our faith. Our mind has a way of filling in the gaps with what we do not know with what might be. Let me give you a couple examples. First, though there is no indication at all that Paul and Lydia tied the knot, it is interesting to think that it may have crossed their minds. And I have imagined for some time that the woman healed by touching his hem in the scripture from Mark may have been touching a knot on the tassel. Scripture does not tell us this. We can only imagine. So today I would like to tie three loose threads of thought together woven together with spiritual intent to strengthen our faith. The threads relate to prayer, relationships and the cross. The idea is that power is inherent in prayer, inherent in marriages that honor God and are particularly present with power when we pick up our own crosses. In all three we quite simply experience the power of God. Friends, every marriage is a three-way relationship between God, the husband and the wife. When God is at the middle cord, the center of the marriage, the rope becomes so strong that it does not fray or unravel. The goal of a Christian marriage, Christian prayer and mission is for the three to become increasingly intertwined and connected to all the activities of our life, taking us on a journey, helping us to grow up in God’s world…strong…kind of like tassels in a pray shawl… kind of like our love received and given in the presence of God. Forgive me for writing this knot of a message. Maybe in time it will tighten up to form something worthy of the topic. Maybe Jesus can fill in what is missing for you.

Pray we learn to master prayer as a tool for being better humans. Pray that when we read something in the Bible we do not understand that we explore the context of the text. Pray we remember but also imagine the subtle connections as well. Pray that the Psalms sung become one of the important parts of our relationship with God. Pray we experience an earful of prayer in the Psalms. Pray we reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ shawl in prayer. Pray our marriages become even stronger. Pray we realize that love always involves responsibility. Pray we are honest enough to realize that we do not really love Christ unless we are willing to take up His cross and continue on the journey.

Blessings,

John Lawson