The Long Obedience of the Psalms of Ascent
Curing the dull ache for something more.
The monarch butterfly is a fascinating creature. Every fall, monarch colonies migrate to Mexico due to the impending, unsurvivable winter. The pilgrimage can cover up to 3,000 miles. Although each colony comes from various locations across the northeastern United States and Canada, they all migrate to the same region in Mexico. Although they each have different stories, come from diverse places, and were birthed in distinct environments, they are all on a journey to a unified home.
What is more intriguing about these butterflies is the self-sacrificial posture they bear witness to on their return pilgrimage north after the winter is over. It takes three to four generations for them to reach their final destination. The first travels some distance, lays eggs, and dies. The eggs grow up, travel a little further, lay eggs, die, and so on, until the final generation, often called the super generation, is established and ready to journey back to Mexico as fall approaches once more.
Every colony of monarch butterflies is anchored by a harmonious vision of home and long obedience. Some generations voluntarily take a journey they will never see the fullness of, but do so for the sake of other generations making it home. Like the monarch butterfly, every disciple of Christ is anchored by a unified vision of home and long obedience for the sake of something much more significant than themselves.
To what extent have we traded these simple realities to satisfy the contemporary need for instant gratification? Furthermore, how has this exchange contributed to our deficient formation into the likeness of Christ that only comes through a life given to long, obedient discipleship?
To recover the authenticity of the earliest Christians, we must return to their way. It was a way marked by tribulation, cultural injustice, and significant persecution. Yet, their devotion to enduring and long obedience allowed the Church to grow stronger and the good news of the Son to remain a timeless call shared by all following generations, namely our own.
What is long obedience?
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is…that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and always has resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”1 The phrase “long obedience in the same direction” became the title for Eugene Peterson’s book on the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120 - 134) and has since grown into a mantra for the life of the ordinary saint. Eugene Peterson saw the crisis of discipleship as worthy of examining over 40 years ago. Today, recovering the original simplicity of the Jesus way is necessary.
In this sermon, I desire to use the Psalms of Ascent and insights from Eugene Peterson and others as a pathway to recovering simple obedience for a more extraordinary story. Following Christ as a Christian disciple calls us on a pilgrimage home, from our backgrounds, perspectives, stories, and cultures to a place where we are all defined by who we collectively become rather than what we individually produce.
The Psalms of Ascent “were likely sung, possibly in sequence, by Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great worship festivals.”2 The geography of the land also played a role in this ascent as “Jerusalem was the highest city in Palestine, and so all who traveled there spent much of their time ascending.”3 However, the pilgrimage wasn’t just a physical ascension to a higher location; it was a metaphoric and symbolic ascension to spiritual maturity.
These journeys, which took place three times a year, were rhythmed breaks from lives marked by work, struggles, and routines to be reminded that humans are, at their core, people redeemed by God—for the Israelites, a people whom God found in Egypt and delivered to the promised land—and part of an extensive, diverse family. In essence, the Psalms of Ascent, and accompanying pilgrimage, reinforce that humanity is a consequence of God’s redemption, protection, and promise. Yet, they meet us on a road that begins at a lower place, with the Psalmist pleading, “Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.”4 As Eugene Peterson writes, “There is wonder upon unexpected wonder on this road, and there are fearful specters to be met. Singing the fifteen psalms is a way both to express the amazing grace and to quiet the anxious fears.”5
To ascend to our joyous destination, we must face all our fears, anxieties, and wanderings, for it is only by facing what holds us down that we ascend to what lifts us. Only when a person faces the humdrum, dull ache stranded in our souls from seasons of tireless production and hardships can they be free to rediscover the joy of being one with their Creator. This is the long obedience. It is a long trajectory of one foot in front of the other, baptized in cadences of home, remembering that God brought you here, sustains you here, and will lead you out. God goes before you, behind you, beside you, around you, and within you.
So we sing our songs again and head home, as spiritually as necessary, to remind ourselves of our heritage's assurance and recapture Christ's simple, patient way.
Practicing long obedience in the pilgrimage of ascent.
In his book Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton tells of a man in a yacht who set out to discover a new land only to miscalculate his course and end up right where he started. Chesterton told this story to ask the question, “How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?”6 Long obedience in the same direction gives us the thrill of discovery, yet continuously and ultimately discovering the place we set out from. The place we set out from is not our making but God himself.
We begin our journey in the distress of a deliverance cry (Psalm 120:1-2), but do so by going to God (represented as Jerusalem) from God as our origin and home. Who we are, and where we are, in Christ, is the grace given to us to take the journey of ascension.
Psalm 121:1-2: I lift my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
Martin Laird reminds us,7
Union with God is not something that needs to be acquired by realized. The reality, which the term “union” points to…is already the case. The unfolding in our lives of this foundational union is what St. John of the Cross called “the union of likeness.” It is our journey from image to likeness.
When you set off on a pilgrimage of ascension, though you begin in the desperate anticipation of all you carry with you in spirit, you discover God isn’t waiting for you to reach him but is setting off with you in grace. Therefore, you can be delighted with resilience and joy. Your perspective is moved from the distress of despair and war to your helper. Peterson writes, “Psalm 121 is a quiet voice gently and kindly telling us that we are, perhaps, wrong in the way we are going about the Christian life, and then, very simply, showing us the right way.”8
Psalm 122:1: I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
With your eyes fixed on home, from the grace of the one with whom you are joined, you see clearly that the remainder of the pilgrimage can be endured and that you are being transformed at every point of elevation. However, your joy is in your choice to walk. No one is forcing you to ascend; you choose to ascend on a journey you believe will refresh you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the journey of discipleship as being pulled “out of the realm of finite into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality).”9
The choice to follow the leading of our shepherd is a choice to die on the path to living out the infinite possibilities of our lives in Christ. When the choice is made, there is an immediate sense of intent in the face of initial uncomfortability. With the hills in sight, you look to the helper and declare gladness in the invitation to come home.
As you ascend, you feel the courage to worship, foreseeing the mercy of a present Father.
Psalm 123:1-2: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.”
You remember that the Lord brought you here, and allow thanksgiving to become a prophetic lens through which you see your life.
Psalm 124:2-3a: “If it had not been for the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive…”
You anchor yourself in trust of your God, who remains, endlessly, the rock on which your life is secure.
Psalm 125:1: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”
You dream of a day when every wrong is made right and everything lost is restored.
Psalm 126:1: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.”
You give up authority of your life’s story and submit to the beauty of what he is writing in you and humankind.
Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”
You grow up in the fear of the Lord, revering God's capacity to keep you in the right relationship with him.
Psalm 128:1: “Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.”
You start to pray audacious prayers.
Psalm 129:5: “May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned back.”
You start to see the beauty in the long obedience that you would never see striving for instant gratification.
Psalm 130:5: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”
You realize that your posture, obedience, direction, and election mean much more than your words—three of the final four chapters of the Psalms of Ascent shrink dramatically. Where despair once ruled your soul, a quiet peace now reigns.
Psalm 131:2a: “But I have calmed and quieted my soul.”
You rediscover your purpose, which, like Chersterton’s man in the yacht, is where you’ve come from and where you are going.
Psalm 132:13: “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation.”
With your final resting place ahead, the culmination of a long obedience in the same direction, you rejoice in the unity of the people, from all regions, cultures, stories, and backgrounds, coming together through a heart bent on home and a persevering walk.
Psalm 133:1: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”
All is made right, again.
Psalm 134:3: “May the Lord, maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion.”
Will you choose the long path?
In Henri Nouwen’s book The Inner Voice of Love, he writes, “Stop wandering around. Instead, come home and trust that God will bring you what you need.”10 What if the disorder we often feel—the nagging ache for something more—is the call to long obedience to the path of ascension?
In twenty-first century America, Christians live no differently than anyone else. We have become workers for the sake of fast, quantitative production: more money, more power, more comfort, more security, etc. We get products delivered same-day, “connect” with others via a five-second long text message, spend our lives on devices algorithmized to steal our attention from the life and beauty in front of us, and wonder why we aren’t fulfilled. None of these comforts are inherently evil, but they become snares when they distract us from what truly matters. What our souls, our innermost beings that make us who we are, are crying out for is the pilgrimage of patient, uncomplicated, and long obedience because they ache for home and know that in finding home, they will be made right again.
In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer? “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
God desires you to glorify him by enjoying the life you live in him, and that he lives in and through you, but to find the liberation to do so, and break the disease of despair that the years of disappointment have carried, you must once again take the pilgrimage of ascension. When the journey home becomes a consistent rhythm for our lives, we will live in the blessed assurance that from Zion, all is blessed.
Can you recognize the dull-ache of home within? Or, has it grown into a chronic pain of the soul? Do you long for a day when “justice rolls down like a river,”11 and every wrong is made right? Hear the call to ascend and know that “on the mountain of the Lord, all things will be provided.”12
Matthew 11:28-30 MSG
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
I preached this sermon recently at Dream Church. You can listen to it here:
Psalm 120:2 NRSV.
See Amos 5:24 NRSV.
See Genesis 22:14 NRSV.