“Pass it on”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Psalm 78: 1-39 (Forward, p. 9) CEV p. 601

There’s a song, written by Kurt Kaiser in 1969 and often sang at church campfires, which absolutely epitomizes what evangelism is about. Its title is ‘Pass It On’, and its chorus goes like this:

“It only takes a spark to get a fire going,

And soon all those around can warm up to its glowing.

That’s how it is with God’s love.

Once you’ve experienced it,

You spread his love to everyone,

You want to pass it on.”

There’s only one issue or problem with this proposition: you first have to experience that love, which means that ‘somehow’ you have to come into contact with it—most probably by hearing it, if not by seeing it.

And that lack of hearing is precisely the problem that the psalmist Asaph is addressing in today’s passage. A certain past generation seemingly forgot God’s precious deeds on Israel’s behalf and so failed to believe in Him or trust Him. And apparently, they slipped into this mode of thinking and behaving because ‘the story’ had not been drummed into them.

And so Asaph is most explicit about the need to tell that story:

“My friends, I beg you to listen as I teach. I will give instruction and explain the mystery of what happened long ago. These are things we learned from our ancestors, and we will tell them to the next generation. We won’t keep secret the glorious deeds and the mighty miracles of the Lord” (verses 1-4).

“God gave his Law to Jacob’s descendants, the people of Israel. And he told our ancestors to teach their children, so that each new generation would know the Law and tell it to the next. Then they would trust God and obey his teachings, without forgetting anything God had done. They would be different from their ancestors, who were stubborn, rebellious, and unfaithful to God” (verses 5-8).

Asaph then, in the next verses, relates a terrible litany of the terrible results of that forgetting and that faithlessness.

As always, this raises a question for me, namely a question of how faithful, and how effective, we are in sharing this story. Often, we have a sense that it is somewhat ‘awkward’ to share it with friends or family, or even to bring it up, and indeed, I think that this is often the case. So, let us pray for the occasions or opportunities where this might take place naturally, and for openings that ‘make sense’ and aren’t forced in any way. Let us think ahead about what the faith means to us, the basics of that faith in simple terms, and how this has impacted our lives. And let us pray for the proper words to share this when the time comes.

Forward notes: “We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord, and the wonderful works he has done” (verse 4).

“One of the best preachers I ever heard was a storyteller, but not in the way of peppering his sermons with personal illustrations. Instead, he was a storyteller in the way he made the biblical narrative come alive. Humans are meaning-making creatures, and one of the primary ways that we do that is by telling stories.

“The psalms are the prayer book of the Hebrews, and so it might seem unusual for the body of this psalm, this prayer, to be a recounting of the story of the Exodus. Prayer, praise, and story appear to be different genres, but the psalmist merges them, using story to praise God’s deeds.

“In our liturgical life, we tell the story of our faith in prayers, hymns, reading of Scripture, and homilies, but we are also called to tell that story more broadly. Every time we tell the story of how God has acted in the world and in our lives, it is an act of remembrance as well as an act of praise and thanksgiving.”

Moving Forward: “How are you telling God’s story through words and deeds?”