People
used to bring music into their homes with record players
called hi-fi sets. Hi-fi was an abbreviation for "high
fidelity" meaning music was "faithful" to the original sound.
Better to
hear the real thing.
Into our
sorrows, sins, and heartbreaks Christ came. God did not send
us a good copy of His Son. We receive the real thing. God's
Word and sacraments are the real deal. God doesn't give
reproductions.
Nor does
God listen to pretty background elevator Muzak to drown out
the scratched, gouged discord of our lives. He hears the
real thing.
It is not
a pretty sound on God's ear to listen to disharmony in a
marriage. Lies and breaches of trust scar His ears.
And yet,
King David counted on God's true ear. He cried to the Lord, "Incline
your ear to me; rescue me speedily!"
Realize that Psalm 31 is Christ's own song. It isn't
primarily a refrain about David. It is essentially about
Christ's struggle because He is surrogate, sacrifice, and
savior for David and all of us in distress or bitterness.
Jesus took for himself David's ordeal. Jesus had this very
Psalm 31 on His lips as He died, "Into your hand I commit
my spirit." (v.5)
We don't often think of the sound of the cross to Jesus. How
terrible it was. One might think that if there ever was a
moment for God to turn a deaf ear to us, to divorce us, to
permanently distance himself from us, the cross would have
been it. Abandoned by those He loved, wounded, dishonored,
rejected, and shamed - all the things which characterize the
jarring noise of sin, fit Calvary. Infidelities, betrayals,
hurts, and rejection were a cacophony flung in Christ's face.
Yet, the cross is a melody of Christ's boundless fidelity. "Having
loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." (John
13:1) This is no facsimile of love. It is bona fide.
Christ heard all that was said against him and still
cherished, suffered for, and died for all. Contrary to every
worldly principle and every measure of common sense, Jesus
refused to think of anyone but us. He would not hear of
coming down from the cross as others demanded, and yet He
would listen to the dying cry of a malefactor, "Jesus,
remember me in your kingdom."
Opposite to everything a jilted wife, desperate husband, or
insulted neighbor might use as mantra to justify oneself,
Jesus quietly "bore our sins in his body on the tree, so
that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his
wounds you have been healed."
Can any of us comprehend grace so vast or fidelity so live!
When all our flaws and failures stand in stark relief, there
above them is formed the outline of the cross on which our
Redeemer bore them all. We know it from Psalm 31.
"I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and
my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years
with sighing."
These are Christ's words because He took them as His own. His
own sighing accompanied the taking of our sins, our fears and
brokenness, and even our dying into His own flesh.
The highest fidelity was Christ's faithfulness to die for us.
He took all the clever rationale and ingenious explanations we
use to explain our sin and did not turn away. All our
offenses given and taken Jesus bought with His blood. All the
pain, dismay, and humiliation we caused became His woe. Every
failure, vice, and all the dissonance of man - my discord no
less than yours - was thrust upon this Man, Jesus Christ.
Thank God for the lyric of the Gospel which delivers what
Christ Himself put into the cross. We have a new song of the
highest fidelity. We have the real thing. "The LORD is
my strength and my song; he has become my salvation."
(Ps. 118:14)
Pastor Reed
© 2008
