The Revolution of Routine

The Revolution of Routine--August 8, 2017

"Truly God is good to the upright,

     to those who are pure in heart.

 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;

     my steps had nearly slipped.

 For I was envious of the arrogant;

     I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 

 For they have no pain;

     their bodies are sound and sleek.

 They are not in trouble as others are;

     they are not plagued like other people.

 Therefore pride is their necklace;

     violence covers them like a garment.

 Their eyes swell out with fatness;

     their hearts overflow with follies.

 They scoff and speak with malice;

     loftily they threaten oppression.

 They set their mouths against heaven,

     and their tongues range over the earth....

But when I thought how to understand this,

    it seemed a wearisome task,

 until I went into the sanctuary of God;

     then I perceived their end." [Psalm 73:1-9, 16-17]

Routine is a great deal more powerful than anybody gives it credit for.

Usually, people use the word "routine" with a certain roll of the eyes and shrug of the shoulders.  Routine is just the "same-old, same-old" as opposed to what is new or fresh.

But routine--at least certain kinds of routine--shapes our habits, and habits shape our heads and hearts, and in turn, make a world of difference.  What we repeat, we learn, and what we learn becomes ingrained in the wiring of our minds, until it becomes a lens for how we see the world, and how we deal with what happens in the world.  All of that is to say that in addition to the plastic-framed, extra-thick eyeglasses on my face, I am also always seeing the world through the spectacles created by the habits and routines of my thinking and action.  And you are, too.

The question, then, becomes, which lenses do we allow to affect our view of the world?

Everyone knows the old cliché "Practice makes perfect," but my piano teacher from my high school days used to correct that line.  "Perfect practice makes perfect," she used to insist.  That is to say, reinforcement, repetition, and routine are tools, but they are not magic.  What you repeat will stay with you--so if you keep making mistakes and never correct them with that fourth finger on the B-flat, you will only hard-wire that into your performance.  But once you have learned the way the sonatina is supposed to go, you keep practicing it correctly... and it will stay.  Again, it all comes back to the question, what do we choose to keep repeating... and therefore learning... knowing that what we repeat will likely become the way we think.

I mention all of this because I think it vindicates one of the things people most often complain about in church--especially in the liturgically-minded strand of "church" in which I have grown up and still live.  Church--in particular, the rhythms of a Sunday service, or liturgy--gets accused of being boring because it is repetitious.  It's the same pattern, the same sung lines, the same familiar prayers, the same structure, week after week.  And therefore, it is said sometimes, it is not only routine (said with that same eye-roll and shoulder-shrug) but also stale.  Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say.

Of course, you'll find plenty of alternative suggestions--add screens, add flashing lights, add guitars, add movies, never sing the same song twice in one year, and on and on--for making church feel more "novel."  And quite often, those suggestions assume that if you do something that changes the routine, you are automatically making church "better."  Because, after all, routine is always blah--right?  And my goodness, if you are "routine," well, you must also be irrelevant.

But the poet in what we call Psalm 73 sees things differently.   At least he does now.

This old poem is a sort of reflection on how liturgy saved his life.  Or at least his sanity.

Here's the scene.  The first half of the psalm is a recollection of what it was like earlier in the poet's life at how, well, unfair and unjust life is.  And, in all honesty, he wasn't wrong.  He had seen how often the arrogant, the proud, the powerful, the wicked, and the corrupt won the day, and how often the lowly the helpless were stepped on.  He had seen, too many times, how rotten bullies got away with their rotten bullying, and how easy it was for crooks and con-men to cover up their corruption by dressing it up in pride like a necklace and violence like a three-piece suit. 

And to see so much injustice, so much that "ain't-how-it's-supposed-to-be," in the world, and to have to bear watching the pompous blowhards and arrogant bullies getting away with their awfulness, and to have no one standing up to say, "No!" well, it just about took the wind out of the psalmist's sails.  More than that, the psalmist says, it made him so frustrated he was like a dumb animal, braying and whinnying at the sound of the thunderstorm outside the stable walls (see v. 22). 

He was at the brink of despair--after all, how do you keep going when it feels like you are the only one who sees that the emperor is wearing no clothes?  How do you keep believing in justice when you keep seeing it stepped on while people look away?  How do you keep your sanity when the people around you and the people you had looked up to all seem unfazed and indifferent to seeing crooks get away with crookedness and who aren't bothered to see the arrogant boasting about their greatness while others are pushed to the margins?

These are questions, not just for a distant time thousands of years ago, but for every morning when you watch the news or look around.  These are questions that keep all of us up at night at some time or another, and it boils down to, Why do the wicked prosper?  and perhaps the thornier question underneath it, Why does it seem God lets them get away with it?  Those are hard enough questions by themselves, but they are even harder to ask if, like the psalmist, you feel like nobody else is getting bothered by them, but instead are cheering for the bullies and blowhards as they parade through the street.

It's enough to make you lose your mind, or give up hope.

But... in a odd and understated turn, the poet says, things changed when he "went into the sanctuary of God."  He goes to church.  Well, temple.  He goes to worship--where everything is done with a certain order, a certain structure, a certain precision, and yes, a certain routine--and all of a sudden, "I perceived their end."  That is, he finally saw a new way of making sense of his world.  He had a lens through which to see reality--not that hid or denied the rottenness and injustice, but that put it in a new light. 

In worship, the poet saw a story enacted.  And not just any old story, but THE Story of the God of justice, the God of mercy, the God of goodness who cares for the marginalized (the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, as the Scriptures often name them). And the story of this God is one in which God promises to deflate the puffed-up and powerful, to lift up the lowly and stepped-on, to provide good for all, to give rather than to hoard, and to end oppression, violence, and corruption.  It's a story woven throughout Israel's worship life--you hear it again and again in Israel's hymnbook, the Psalms, how God brought them through the Sea and defeated Pharaoh in Egypt, how God protects the vulnerable, how God is committed to ending injustice.  You see it and hear it again and again and again--most of all, you would hear it in Israel's ancient worship life, in the repeated prayers and songs, the story-telling and ritual re-enactments, that all created a picture of the world.

That's what the poet here in Psalm 73 says--I had no way of making sense of the rottenness and evil in the world, until I looked again through the lens that liturgy gave me. By hearing the story of the particular God we meet in the Bible, in worship, we have our eyes re-trained to deal with all those unpleasant things in a whole new way.  By hearing the story, by rehearing the narrative of the Passover and exodus, by recounting in song the times God was there for us before and saved us from bullies past, the poet can see the headlines of his day in a whole new light.  It doesn't whitewash or ignore the presence of wickedness and bullies, or hide them in a fog of incense, but rather the story he re-learns and rehearses in worship helps him to see with clarity, with courage, and with new resolve the truth: God won't let the bullies stand forever, God does in fact see that they are there, God is not fooled by their lies or their lives of luxury, and God is making us to be a people who can say it out loud when the emperor is wearing no clothes, or when the con-men think they are going to get away with their schemes.

It is in worship that the psalmist gets a new view--which is really an old view that he had forgotten was available to him.  It was a way of making sense of the madness around him without pretending it wasn't there or being driven to despair.  And it happened right in the thick of the regular routine of structured, patterned worship. 

The stories we retell become the narratives that define us.

The rituals we rehearse become the fiber of our being.

The routines to which we give ourselves become the lens through which we see the rest of the world--and they can either equip us for dealing with the injustice and insanity of the world, or they can make us more confused. 

My former piano teacher was right--it's just not practicing anything that makes perfect; it's practicing the right thing. 

What happens in worship for the people of God makes a difference, and it will reinforce something in us.  We will be different people as a result of what and how and when we worship, and one Story or another will become more a part of our identity.  Not worshipping is not an option, since the culture around us is constantly bombarding us with things to give ourselves to (money, stuff, movies, TV, prestige, etc.) and constantly telling us other stories to live our lives by.  Trying NOT to have a story at all leaves us like the poet--at the edge of despair without any way to make sense of the rottenness in the world. 

But in the ritual life of the followers of Jesus, there is the possibility--even for all the ways we have messed it up before or turned it into a performance--that we will hear again the story of the God who silences Pharaoh and Goliath, who lifts up Hannah and Hagar, who welcomes Ruth and Rahab, and who promises to be at work for justice, for mercy, and for good.  And if we hear that story again, it will change who we are.

 

Routine, it turns out, is far for more powerful than any of us may have given it credit for.

What routine will we give ourselves to today?

Lord Jesus, order our days, our hearts, and our lives.