Taste & See the Goodness of King Jesus: A Meditative, Theological Homily for 2024 Delivered on NYE 2023
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” — Psalm 34:8
There are few things greater than walking into our home at dinnertime. The aroma is fresh. Yumminess is in the air. I delight in Paige’s cooking. I delight in fresh food. Whether it’s the stuffed mushrooms at Cadillac Pizza, the Chicken Fried Steak at Harvest McKinney, a hamburger from Kelly Family Farm Stand in Fairview, Pam’s moist brownies, Gina’s flavorfully balanced Chicken Spaghetti, or Paige’s tender slow-cooked chicken, good quality, fresh food is a delight to the soul and even worship-inducing— because it points us to the God who created all of these diverse, rich flavors and textures to be enjoyed by humans.
Smelling and tasting delicious food is balm (medicine) for the body and the soul that breaks down relational barriers, subsides anxieties, and is a bearer of joy embodied. I don’t know if you have ever experienced food in this way. If you have only eaten out of necessity and pragmatism…If you have never experimented and lingered in the preparation and/or the eating of your food, take a moment to linger with the smells and the everchanging taste profiles. If you linger with deep fried fast food, there’s a good chance your experience will be just want it is— blah.
Take coffee for example. (And before I start…I am an equal opportunity drinker. I drink our church’s Folger coffee every Sunday. I drink TXB’s coffee when I see Dave and his early morning buddies, but…) Coffee exemplifies this point immensely. My experience with Folgers or Community or Maxwell House or Starbucks is categorically different than my experience with Sey, Nomad, Manhattan, and La Cabra coffee roasters. I am not contesting that your favorite roaster’s blend isn’t your best preference of coffee. What I am contesting is that what you drink (experience) between let’s say Folgers and Black & White Coffee is categorically different. The complexity of Black & White’s coffee produced by Brayan Alvear has tasting notes of strawberry, milk chocolate, and peach. Folger’s tasting notes? Bold and bitter. (Kidding…kind of.) The complexity of the cup changes for a host of reasons: market distribution, bean origin, roasting time, grind setting, processing method, and so on. When I drink a delightful cup of coffee, I am anticipating encountering the thing itself: coffee for what it is, what it can be, coffee in its unique form. I delight in lingering with a delicious cup of coffee with friends and strangers alike, enjoying the company and the cup, because as we linger with the delight of the cup we linger to the Creator of the Cup and testimonies of his goodness.
When we are honest with ourselves, we all desire to encounter, linger with, and experience those things which bring delight. Yet so many of us treat God like a fast-food run through Chick-fil-A. We neither linger with him, encounter him, or experience the delight he is. Yet it is with him the psalmist says blessed are we when we dwell and take refuge. Tasting the goodness of the Lord is a generous gift from above that many of us take for granted. Yet we wonder why our lives are stale and tasteless. We wonder why churches are in decline. We wonder why all of our good deeds aren’t adding up to more people at church or why our marriages and family feel lifeless and unenriched. All the while, we’re missing the delightful aroma of Christ, missing ongoing encounter with the Spirit of the Slain-Yet-Risen Lamb, the Spirit of Christ. We, yes us believers in Christ, neglect to eat at the table of God, exchanging our seat at Jesus’ table to eat at the table of religious pragmatism and legalism in the so-called name of Christ, declining an ongoing encounter (relationship) with the Father, Son, and Spirit. We neglect to eat at the tables of God, exchanging our seat at Jesus’ table to eat at the table of our passions of the flesh (innate, instinctive reactions inconsiderate of the good news of Jesus) and faithless logic (that God will not intervene).
Whether Christ follower or non-follower of Jesus, the mandate is the same: Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good and that the Lord is Christ Jesus (Psalm 34:8; c.f. 1 Peter 2:3). Our encounters with the Living God himself is an aroma of delight, transformation, and provision. Yet so hastily abandoned for the convenient and the immediate. How have you recently encountered the Spirit of the Living God? When is the last time you have in all humility and hunger eaten at his table? How have you tasted and seen the Lord’s goodness momentarily? When is the last time you shared your taste of the Lord’s goodness to believers near and unbelievers far off?
We share what we have tasted and encountered. I know nothing of three-star Michelin chef Alexandre Couillon’s La Marine in Paris, France. I cannot speak of his daily trips to the fish market and his fresh vegetables from his garden. I cannot testify to the beauty or the goodness of his food. I can attest to the deliciousness of— as I have already mentioned— Pam’s moist brownies or Gina’s son’s mango habanero hot sauce.
In this psalm of thanksgiving, King David testifies to what he encounters: the goodness and nearness of the Lord amid his difficulty. He says to the hearer, “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34 addresses the nearness of YHWH to those who fear the Lord, challenging our notions of how and when we encounter the Lord. King David invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good.
In the modern world, we are indoctrinated by a materialistic worldview. In other words, there is no supernatural world. The world is a closed continuum, as Rudolph Bultmann would argue in the mid-twentieth century. The physical world is all we have, some would assert. Or as Fredrick Nietzsche declared, “God is dead”, critiquing the erosion of religious belief in the Enlightenment (aka the Age of Reason), a period of Western cultural history whereby senses of evidence, separation of church and state, and natural law are prioritized, heavily influencing the modern (and postmodern) world in which we live.
This materialistic worldview influences the way we relate to the world around us: technology, medicine, consumerism, industrialism. It influences the way we relate to one another and the ways in which we relate to the Triune God.
In some moments, you and I believe and act as functional deists. A functional deist believes in a far off god who does not act within human history or in contemporary time and space. In other words, we believe “in God” but do not *actually* act as though we will *encounter God* in the here and now. We believe that God created the world, but we do not live as though he is near and present in the world. We believe that God *can* be a benevolent god, but do not live expecting or anticipating his benevolence. We pray, but without expectation that he *actually* will act in our midst. We are functional deists because we assent to a creating deity who we assert to be the Christian god, yet do not expect the Spirit of Christ to encounter us momentarily in time and space.
Can you imagine how imminence (nearness) changes the way we live— the way we walk in the fear of the Lord?
What I want to continue to draw your attention to and to what I want to draw your affections toward today is lingering in this phrase, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
Our refuge in him is intended to be ever-present as the Spirit of Christ is ever-present with those who fear the Lord. Our refuge in the Lord isn’t intended to be only those moments of great obstacle and disaster in our lives. I wonder if we really understand the necessity of refuge in everyday life. We live in a rather industrialized, developed country with false illusions of security and sufficiency. We feel safe, so we don’t think about the safety needed when those illusions of security fail us.
A safe place meaningful to me is my grandparent’s lake house. As a high school and college student, I would deliberately not bring acquittances who I thought would ruin my safe place. It was a place I would retreat for comfort and refreshment. A place I would linger for days enjoying the lake, the animals, the plants, and the skies above. It was my refuge from life in a chaotic world, where my fears and failures would silence.
Finding refuge in the Lord is not like what Ernest Hemingway in Death in Afternoon describes as querencia: the preferred locality of safety a bull finds in an arena during a bull fight. Querencia still leaves a place of safety to be desired. But the Lord’s refuge is a place of eternal safety and trust. A place where “those who fear him have no lack” (Psalm 34:9), or as the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, “as having nothing, but possessing everything.”
The Lord’s refuge is different than any other refuge you might experience because it is embodied by believers in Christ even in this “present evil age”. Yes, indeed, we have been raised with Christ and your life is hidden with Christ, who is our life (Colossians 3:1-4). You, oh Jesus follower, are hidden with Christ.
Hidden with Christ is your life. This language is similar to the Hebrew concept of refuge: hidden, concealed. And as your life has been hidden with Christ in God, so you feast with Christ— you taste and see that he is good, because your life is united with his. You have the Spirit of Christ in you.
This is a moment for us to pause and ask seriously important and beautifully profound questions about our frequency and ability to taste and see the goodness of King Jesus: What is my present awareness of the Spirit of Christ in my life? What is my present relationship with the Spirit of Christ in daily, weekly, monthly moments? How is the Spirit of Christ manifestly present in moments of my life?
Whether you are young or old, you have not arrived in God’s all-encompassing holiness. There is more of Christ to taste in your life. And King David on the run from Saul knew this. He saw how Christ was at work behind the scenes protecting him from his enemies, even when he ran to his enemies.
There is yumminess in the air, because the Lord is near and he bears good gifts for those who fear and take refuge in him. Verses 8-10 explicate this theme on four occasions.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. (vs. 8)
Blessed is the man who take refuge in him. (vs. 8)
Those who fear him have no lack. (vs. 9)
Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (vs. 10)
Why? Because “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry” (vs. 15) and “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (vs. 18).
The Lord is near and brings good gifts. Have you seen him in grace and truth? Have you seen that he is kind and compassionate? Have you seen how he heals and transforms? Have you seen the good gifts which he brings as he fulfills the Scriptures: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2; Psalm 146:7-8 // Isaiah 42:7; Leviticus 25:10).
Take heed and be glad. “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together” (vs. 3)! The Scriptures say (Psalm 68:8; Ephesians 4:8), “When he ascended [from the dead] on high he led a host of captives, and he gave good gifts to men.” “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:11-15). He gave good gifts of liberation from the chains of this present evil age, and he gave good gifts that “we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10) for the good of his kingdom on earth for his glory and honor in every circumstance.
Likewise, Peter says, “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:1-3).
In other words, these good gifts from the Father in Christ point us toward Jesus, grow us into imitation of Jesus, and building us together as a testimony of God’s goodness in the world— “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:3). Tasting & seeing the goodness begins by receiving “gift of God”, of which Jesus says to the Samaritan Woman, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).
You must first taste and see that Jesus is Lord. You know that’s what I find interesting about Peter’s use of Psalm 34 in his first letter. The language coming directly from the Greek Old Testament say, “χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος” (translated “the Lord is good”). Yet one syllable change in χρηστὸς adds more robust meaning. This syllable change leads to some scribes copying First Peter to translate “the Lord is good” to “Christ (χριστός) is Lord”. Indeed, Christ is Lord and indeed he is good. Have you tasted the goodness of his salvation? Have you tasted the goodness of a life hidden in him?
King David definitively did, even despite his fears, failures, and doubts. He drank not merely once but continually from the waters of the Living God. For he says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1) and “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:10).
Oh, how often do we forget that the Lord gives good things when earthly things consume our hearts and minds, when we neglect to set our minds on the heavenly things (Colossians 3:1-4) and to set our eyes on “Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Look to the Father in Christ to give good gifts. The Spirit says through the Holy Scriptures, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 6:11)! James clarifies that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3).
Yet when we taste and see the goodness of the Lord our affections are (re)oriented to the things of Christ. This is why the Apostle Paul can say, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).
It is the one who is near and good that strengthens him. Once again I ask, “What is your present awareness of the Spirit of Christ in your life? What is your present relationship with the Spirit of Christ in daily, weekly, monthly moments? How is the Spirit of Christ manifestly present in moments of my life? And when have you shared and bore witness to the presence of Christ to build up the body of Christ and call unbelievers into relationship with King Jesus?
King David experienced the Lord in unexpected and in non-miraculous ways. This psalm written as a psalm of thanksgiving to the Lord for protecting him from the enemies to whom he ran as he fled from King Saul (1 Samuel 21:10-15). He ran into the very town from which Goliath grew up. The very town that had heard the saying, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” Yet the Lord protected him as he fled Saul and as he eventual fled Gath. This psalm was written as a thanksgiving to the Lord when the Lord protected King David in an ordinary moment.
In every day, ordinary moments, we have experiences and encounters with the physical world, with our spouses, with our children, with nature, with food, but how often are you aware of the presence of Christ in your midst? King David invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good (vs. 8) and to magnify the Lord together (vs. 3).
Can you imagine a community of Jesus followers who share the sweetness and yumminess of the Lord to one another and their town? Can you imagine a church family who is built up because of individuals tasting and seeing the goodness of King Jesus in their individual and corporate lives? Can you imagine how your daily encounters with the Lord, with the Spirit of Christ impacts not merely our church family, but the community of Trenton, because you taste and see the kindness of the Lord routinely?
We can be a community of Jesus followers who taste and share. We can be a community of Jesus followers who lead people to something better, more delicious than Paige’s slow cooked chicken or Pam’s moist brownies or that delightful cup of Black & White coffee with notes of strawberry, milk chocolate, and peach. Will you linger with me in 2024 in regularly tasting and sharing the goodness of King Jesus among us? And as the “peace of Christ rule in our hearts” and “word of Christ dwell in us richly” (Colossians 3:15-17), may we be a people in 2024 who taste and share the goodness of King Jesus to one another and within our spiritually decaying community. To our God and Father, who by the power of His Spirit in Christ has graciously allowed us to taste his goodness, be the glory. Amen.