As
a little girl, I always looked forward to the season before Christmas
when my mom would make fudge. Before the actual fudge-making could
begin, she would buy big bags of nuts, mostly walnuts, and my dad
and I would have the job of cracking the nuts. I suppose she bought
whole nuts because it was much more economical than buying the already
cracked pieces. Or maybe she just wanted to keep the two of us occupied.
Whatever—it worked! My dad was a very quiet and patient kind
of guy and we spent hours working on those nuts each year. He did
the “heavy lifting” and I picked out the pieces of nutmeat
inside.
Who
knew that that annual ritual in our household would actually help
prepare me to study the Psalms? You see, sometimes reading the Psalms
and understanding the Psalms is a lot like cracking open a hard nut.
There’s a lot inside that’s well worth the trouble it
takes. But getting to the meat, the heart of the matter, requires
patience and some skill and a good deal of digging.
This
of course runs contrary to the way we Americans like things to be—fast,
accessible, user-friendly. We are the land of In-n-Out Burgers, ATMs
and express lanes. There are even Bibles designed now to be easy to
read, user-friendly, God’s word in sound bites. I hate to tell
you, but Psalm 82 would never make the cut. True, it’s only
8 verses long—it’s got brevity going for it—but
it’s dense. Hard to get at. Maybe not what you think it is at
first glance. If you’re in a hurry, you will most surely miss
the sweet nutmeat inside this very hard nut that will give flavor
and texture and substance to your faith.
Psalm
82 is really an entire courtroom drama packed into one little song.
And it’s the only one like it in all the Psalms. I want to thank
Ruth for doing such a great job of reading it this morning to help
us hear the plot line in which God is presiding judge, prosecuting
lawyer and jury. Listen again to all that is going on in just these
eight verses:
First,
a Narrator sets (God has taken his place in the divine council;
the stage: in the midst of the gods, he holds judgment:)
Then,
GOD interrogates “How long will you judge unjustly and show
the gods: partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Then
God turns to the They have neither knowledge nor understanding;
people and announces they walk around in darkness;
the verdict: all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
And
God pronounces “I say: ‘You are gods, children of the
Most High,
a harsh sentence: all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
and fall like any prince.’”
The
psalmist calls upon Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
God to rule the earth for all nations belong to you!”
with justice:
In
God’s court the rights of the lowly and the destitute are maintained.
Justice is given to the weak and the orphan. And any who are vulnerable
are delivered from the hand of the wicked.
This
is not quite a feel-good Psalm. This is not a Psalm of comfort in
a time of our personal grief or loss—at least at first glance.
Instead, you see, the language of this Psalm will sound familiar to
us as something we’ve come to expect the prophets to say, more
than the Psalmist. The prophets, like Isaiah….Amos…..Micah….all
the prophets, Jesus, and Mary, his mother….Remember her song,
the song she sang while she was carrying him in her womb? “God’s
mercy is on those who fear him, from generation to generation. He
has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the
imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from
their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with
good things and sent the rich empty away….”
Actually,
all this prophet-language should sound very familiar to us, the people
called Methodist. Wesley insisted on maintaining that there is no
holiness without social holiness. He maintained that justice in the
public arena—in his day that had to do with child labor laws,
and treatment of people in jail and prison, and with the plight of
the poor and hungry—was the expression of God’s love and
grace. What was true for the individual, according to Wesley, the
freedom that God’s grace gives, was also to be true for society,
which was to manifest that same grace with freedom and justice for
all. For Wesley, it was a way of living out what we pray in the Lord’s
Prayer: “thy Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”
And
one of the ways Methodists carried this emphasis forward was by calling
these Sundays of the church year the Season of Kingdomtide. This has
fallen out of favor of late because it puts us at odds with all our
ecumenical partners—the Lutherans, and Episcopalians, and Presbyterians
and so forth--none of whom ever observed it. But I think that instead
of dropping it, we should give Kingdomtide as our Methodist gift to
the ecumenical mix.
The
practice of Kingdomtide grew out of the Social Gospel movement in
this country and was an effort to emphasize the social dimensions
of the Gospel, reaching out to the poor and marginal with compassion
and mercy.
Kingdomtide is a season in the church year when we remember that God
in Christ Jesus reigns over all the rulers and monarchs and leaders
of this world. God reigns. And that puts everything about what happens
on this earth in perspective. Psalm 82 could well be the theme song
of Kingdomtide. It is all about God’s justice and mercy.
But
to understand it, we need to clarify one very important thing in this
Psalm. When it says that God assembles the gods in court, who is that
referring to? Who are those other gods? Now, when the Psalmist wrote
this Psalm, he did so in the context of his time, a time of polytheism,
a plurality of gods. The literature of Mesopotamia and Canaan describe
similar councils of the gods, gods of different tribes and nations
and so forth.
But
now as we bring the meaning of this sacred text forward into our time,
it’s clear that it must mean much more. Because we don’t
live in a time when we imagine a whole gaggle of gods up in heaven.
Most biblical scholars agree that as we read this Psalm now, “the
gods” now are really all those humans who have been given power
and authority over others, people who can act like gods in other people’s
lives---judges, legislators, governors and presidents, bankers, administrators,
city council members, police, health care administrators—anyone
with authority to rule through their decisions and policies.
And
in Psalm 82, God makes it clear that these “gods” have
failed. Not only had these rulers been unjust, they had failed to
take positive action on behalf of the needy and the poor, the orphans
and the destitute, any who are vulnerable.
We
can relate. Those of us who live and work in Santa Monica most likely
have a story or two or three to share about arbitrary rules and regulations,
permits and policies. And all of us who get our health care through
an HMO have a tale or two to tell as well. I can honestly say that
my experience has been mostly positive, but as your pastor, I have
heard story after story about denied referrals and waits and spending
hours on hold trying to get to talk to a person who could answer your
question. And for all the predictable excesses of Michael Moore’s
new film, SICKO, there’s a great scene in which a woman’s
HMO denied payment for her ambulance ride because she did not call
for prior authorization. Never mind the fact that she was picked up
by the ambulance when she was unconscious after an auto accident!
“Just when exactly was I supposed to call???” she asks
scornfully.
Specific
politics and parties aside, there is within all of us a sense of what
is right and fair, of what is just and unjust. We chafe at a world
where wrong seems too often to prevail. We lament that the unjust
go unpunished. The great contemporary theologian, N.T. Wright, whose
book we read in the Book Study last year, says that this feeling comes
from a sense of rectitude deep within us, a sense of God’s plumbline
measuring right from wrong, inside us like the memory of dream. He
says it’s like a dream know we dreamt, but can’t bring
to mind the details of. It comes back to us only in bits and pieces,
but the emotion is there in us. The power of the dream is in us. Wright
says that this sense of justice deep within us comes from God, in
whose image we are created.
Yes--it
comes from the God who says, here in Psalm 82: “How long will
you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice
to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the
destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand
of the wicked.”
And
when those charged with upholding the law and doing what is right
become callous and arbitrary, then everything begins to crumble. Everything
starts to become unglued, the foundations shake and there is no solid
ground on which to stand.
One
scholar of the Psalms summarizes it this way: “In the hands
of the gods, power augments evil, while the afflicted go without compassion
and the weak without help. [God’s] acid test is whether by mercy
and justice they save, and the gods do not pass the test. Their failure
is so colossal that the foundations of the earth are shaken….And
just here is the grace of this strange [psalm]. The Lord who dooms
our gods does it in the name of his own justice and mercy…”
You
see, Psalm 82 is a Psalm of comfort after all. It is the assurance
that God is a just God. God is still the standard of justice. God
sees all that’s wrong with this world and demands accountability.
Psalm 82 is the conviction that God is righteous and caring and does
look after those most in need. It is the proclamation that our God
is a God of justice and love, whose mercy is never-ending.
And
God draws us in, for the work is not God’s alone. Wright calls
it: “putting the world to rights.” We remember the dream
deep within, we seek do our part with God in creating a just and caring
world. Our youth will do their part when they return to New Orleans
later this month to rebuild homes. Our Wesley Walkers will do their
part next weekend when they walk to raise money for a cure for cancer.
Our Church and Community Committee and all our volunteers will do
their part as they give life to the new Food Pantry at Upward Bound
House. And on and on…This is our faithful response to the demand
and the longing of the living God that this world should be a place
of justice and love.
Thanks
be to God for the gift of the Psalms which shape our faith, hold us
accountable and undergird our hope.
Amen.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
Notes:
N.T.
Wright. Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. New York:
HarperCollins, 2006.
James
L. Mays. Preaching and Teaching the Psalms. Louisville, KY: John Knox
Press, 2006.
Psalm
82: For the Sake of Justice and Mercy