The sword hangs suspended

1020 C. M.
Impending judgments.

COME, let our souls adore the Lord,
   Whose judgments yet delay;
   Who yet suspends the lifted sword,
   And gives us time to pray.

2 Great is our guilt; our fears are great,
   But let us not despair;
   Still open is the mercy-seat
   To penitence and prayer.

3 Kind Intercessor, to thy love
   This blessed hope we owe:
   O let thy merits plead above,
   While we implore below.

4 Though justice near thy awful throne
   Attends thy dread command,
   Lord, hear thy servants, hear thy Son,
   And save a guilty land.
                         Anne Steele
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
What I find interesting is that this hymnal has a section entitled Public Fasts, from which the last two hymns I've posted came. When was the last time you saw a hymnal with a section like that?!

The other thing I noticed is that the first verse contains an illusion to the census that David took toward the end of his reign, with the result that a plague swept through the land. The angel of the Lord was about to strike Jerusalem, but YHWH orders him to to pause, giving David time to intercede. Hence the suspended sword.

The question is, how long will the sword remain suspended over our divided and hate and violence riddled land? Or is the hate and violence a form of judgment for our selfishness? I can't pretend to know the answer to that…
</idle musing>

A different fast

Some men go wIthout knowing on a hunger strike in the prison of the mind, starving for God. There is joy, ancient and sudden, in this starving. There is reward, grasp of the intangible, in the flaming reverie breaking through the latticework of notions.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 335

The response

We are body, soul, and spirit and not bodies with a spirit or soul dwelling in us. The former sees us as an organic unity, while the latter sees us as having an inferior part (body) and a superior part (soul, spirit). Fasting in the Bible is the organic, unified response of a whole person to a sacred moment.— Sermon on the Mount, page 201

<idle musing>
It's that nasty gnosticism sneaking into our theology again: only the spirit really matters. Wrong! We are an "organic, unified...whole person" and the sooner we adjust our theology the better. Perhaps then we won't have obese preachers who rail against other sins but ignore the sin of gluttony—just to address the most obvious example.
</idle musing>

Do ut des?

[T]he lack of emphasis on the promises that come to the one fasting—Jesus only promises “reward”—means we need to avoid motivating people to fast by what they might gain. The obsession some have with marketing fasting because of its many blessings can be called “benefititis,” the inflammation of material and spiritual blessings that come to the one who fasts. There are no guarantees because fasting is not a mechanical device we ply in order to get something.— Sermon on the Mount, page 200

<idle musing>
But isn't that so like our culture? We reduce everything to the balance sheet. I do this, I get that. No payback? Why should I do it?

Far more pagan that Christian, isn't it? We just rarely take the time to look at it so baldly...

By the way, do ut des is a Latin phrase that means I give so that you will give. About sums up our view of life doesn't it?
</idle musing>

Turn it on its head

Jesus may well be turning the act of fasting inside out in a comic act of exaggeration: the quintessential act of grief in the Jewish world (fasting) becomes an act of celebration. How so? He tells them to “put oil on your head and wash your face (6:17). As we find in Psalms 23:5 and 104:15, oil on the head or face is a sign of gladness and joy, and this might mean Jesus encourages them to dress up for a party.— Sermon on the Mount, page 198