Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-219 Sunday 05 Nov 2000

Reading: PSALM 35 – SYMPATHY THROUGH EXPERIENCE

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

We constantly ask the question: ‘Just how well does the Lord understand me?’ Prepare to learn more about his astonishing inner knowledge of his people.

What does this Psalm mean when it is transformed in Christ?

It teaches us about the leader’s solidarity with his people in shared suffering. David knew life as experienced by the ‘poor and needy’ (v 10). His qualities of strong fellow-feeling were the making of his leadership. Later ‘among the throngs of people’ David testified to God’s faithful love (v 18).

The best leaders are witnesses. This principle defined Christ’s ministry. He provocatively stressed his solidarity with the ‘poor and needy’ of every kind, all who were in danger of losing their true life (see Matt 21:19). We sinners are the most needy, turned away from love and deprived of glory, foolishly choosing Siberia instead of the radiance of God’s face. But Jesus, by entering our experience gained inner knowledge of the way we are, the causes and symptoms of our disorders.

But to do so he had to weaken and limit himself for he must be able to feel the heat and the blast of those powers which wreck human happiness (see Phil 2:5-8). He opened himself to the seductive, mesmeric spell of demonic fascination. He came through the gravitational pull of temptation and all the difficulties of clinging to the will of God (see Heb 2:14). He did it that ‘in order to burst the dazzling bubble from within’ (Urs Balthaasar – see Luke 4:1-13).

Like David then (v 18), Jesus now moves among his family, telling us that the Father can be trusted. He risked everything in God’s love, put his full weight on it in the darkness of the cross, and found it strong enough (see Heb 2:10-13). Now he ministers to us out of the riches of his experience, bound to us in unbreakable solidarity, qualified to diagnose and heal (see Heb 4:15).

Doctrines should be prayed through. How will this doctrine of Christ’s solidarity with his people affect the way you pray?

– Dennis Lennon

Copyright Scripture Union, 2000

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