With Your Whole Heart

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I will sing your praise.”

That’s the first verse of the Psalm assigned for today, Psalm 138. At first glance, it’s a standard hymn of thanksgiving. But one detail stands out: “Before the gods I will sing your praise.” You might be forgiven for wondering which gods, exactly. We confess only one God, don’t we? Well, one God in three Persons, but let’s save the theological particulars for Holy Trinity Sunday. “Before the [other] gods I will sing your praise,” the Psalmist insinuates. What do you suppose that means?

Once you’re aware of one scriptural reference to multiple deities, you’re bound to notice others. Psalm 95, for instance, is commonly included in Morning Prayer, one of the three daily offices we’ve preserved in the Lutheran tradition. It’s called the Venite, Latin for the Psalm’s first verb: “Come, let us sing to the Lord….” During my time in seminary, we sang the Venite weekly in chapel. Turn to page 300 in the red hymnal if you’d like to see the setting we used:

Sing the refrain again with me, if you’d like.

“You, Lord, are a great God, and a great ruler above all gods.” There it is again. Despite our insistence on monotheism in Judaism and Christianity, our sacred text seems to imply that there are, in fact, many gods, only one of which we dare to call “Lord.”

Martin Luther, the founder of our theological tradition, did not flinch at this insight. In his Large Catechism, which serves as a sort of leader’s guide to the Small Catechism, Luther takes up this question in his explanation of the First Commandment:

[Excerpt from The Book of Concord, pp. 386-7]

“True faith and confidence of the heart… fly straight to the one true God and cling to [that God] alone.”

The question remains, how shall we distinguish the true God from all the others? Peter hits the nail on the head in today’s Gospel from Matthew: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus asks the disciples on the road. And there is some confusion. Then he gets down to brass tacks: “But who do you say that I am?” to which Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answers him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.” In other words, Attaboy, Peter, you’ve made a true confession. Martin Luther would be proud.

Except that Jesus is wary of letting the truth get out. He “immediately warns the disciples not to tell anyone. Why?” As one interpreter puts it,

While Peter [uses] the correct title, he has no idea what kind of Messiah Jesus actually is. None of [the disciples] do. Best to keep quiet.

[Jesus’ followers] are still imagining power, victory, and religious certainty. They cannot yet imagine a Messiah who refuses violence, forgives enemies, and reveals the glory of God while hanging on a cross saying, “Father, forgive them.”

This means the whole crew still has to live the question, which is what discipleship is all about.[1]  

As the chief representative of the “one true God,” Jesus will continue to surprise us. Yet he is “a mirror of the Father’s heart,” as Luther writes elsewhere in the Large Catechism,[2] which is to say Jesus reveals to us the one who loves the world with abandon; the one who “is high, yet cares for the lowly,” to quote today’s Psalm again; the one whose “steadfast love endures forever,” for the persecuted, yes, and even for the persecutors.

Friends, there are many gods vying for your devotion. Discipleship is about discernment, that is, perceiving the one among the many. And if “true faith and confidence of the heart fly straight to the one true God,” it’s because Christ has already shown you God’s own heart, a heart full of grace and compassion, a heart full of steadfast love and faithfulness.

[1] Street Psalms Weekly Lectionary resources, streetpsalms.org/proper-16-21-year-a/.

[2] The Book of Concord, 440.