The Psalm appointed for today had me running for my Jewish Study Bible. The BCP version is quite different from the
NRSV and the JSB is even different from that. Is this evidence of inconsistency
in Scripture? Of course! Whenever words are translated from one
language to another, it is doesn't quite have the same meaning. And when they are being translated not merely
from one language to another but from one era to another the inconsistencies are
even greater.
Psalm 52 is not a
praise of God as is usual with other biblical psalms. It is a rant against the injustice of someone
who is using his power to undo the works of God. And following the Amos reading for today it
makes for a really heavy first bit to our readings.
I do love this psalm.
It allows me to rant and rave about the injustices perpetrated by those
who would subvert the Hesed—the Loving
Kindness of God. It does seem a bit self-righteous
in parts, but don’t we all do that at some point when trying to deal with people
who are arrogant or unjust? But there is
so much unvarnished truth in the psalm. “The
righteous shall see and tremble, and they shall laugh at him saying, this is
the one who did not take God for a refuge, but trusted in great wealth and
relied upon wickedness.” In other
words: “That rich guy over there who is
being a jerk will get his because God says so.”
I can think of many people I would have liked to quote this
psalm to in order to prove my righteousness. But I must admit that wouldn't get
me very far and finally make me realize that I was being just as much a jerk as
the rich guy. But that isn't the point
of the psalm. The point of the psalm is
that real motives will out. When we try to cover up our real motives with
pontifications, and make excuses for ourselves, truth will out. Our
motives are not only clear to God but they will eventually be apparent to those
around us. The high and mighty one to
whom this psalm is addressed who is the deceiver will be revealed as a purveyor
of lies.
Paired with the Amos reading, which is an extension of last
week’s prophecy of the plumb line, today’s reading reminds the captive people
of Judah living in Babylon of what had happened to Israel. The Israelites were
sold off and assimilated into other cultures of the Ancient Middle East. They forgot their allegiance to the God who
had gathered them into a people after the Exodus. They failed to serve their communities by
maintaining the Mosaic Law given them at Sinai and they were swallowed up by
other cultures and Israel was no more.
Mosaic Law was initially based on maintaining tribal life or
family communal life. Land was held in
common and for the common good. Leaders
originally were the heads of families but as agriculture replaced nomadic herd
following, the life began to change. And
the 8th century BCE was a time of economic change. Land that once belonged to the tribes began
to be sold by the kings to people outside of the kingdom, and treaties were
being made by the kings who paid no attention to the traditions of the
people. Israel became a nation of
traders with wealth becoming in the hands of the few rather than at the service
of the tribes. It is this that Amos is
railing about. It was a time of social
upheaval and Israel had to pay the price of disintegration when the primary
reason for the existence for the Chosen People of Israel, the Light to Lighten
the Gentiles to love one God, had been lost.
Some 250 years later while the People of Judah are in
captivity in Babylon, the leaders of their beleaguered tribes decided to gather
the history and the literature of their people to keep their culture
alive. They had seen what had happened
to the 10 tribes of Jacob when dispersed by the Assyrians. They were determined live separate lives from
the cultures around them and began to form themselves back in to the people of
Judah. When they were allowed to return
to Judah in the late 8th century BCE, they had already developed a
new national character—a new cultural story from which they lived and
understood their relationship with God.
It was while they were in Babylon that much of the Hebrew Scriptures
were gathered and written. When they
returned to Jerusalem they already had all kinds of laws that would solidify
their national character. But one thing
was certain: They understood that it was
the failure to follow God’s law that had been the reason that their nations had
been overrun and they were determined not to allow it to happen again.
Prophets like Amos who had so poetically expressed God’s
displeasure at Israel’s greediness were looked to as formulas for avoiding
being captured by larger powers. And the
passage we have for today sounds amazingly harsh when it is attributed to
God. But when we understand that the prophecy
rang true with the experience of those who had been carried off into
captivity. Such traumatic memories never
die in cultures. And we can see a
similar thing in our own nation with the different cultural stories that are
lived out in African-American and Anglo-American communities. The histories we live out in our lives have
very different origins but have profound effects on our shared experiences.
Hebrew prophecy is never sooth saying. It is not telling the future. It is the warning of God that the state of
the commonweal is being threatened by greed, mismanagement, false prophets or ‘whoring
after other gods.’ And it is from these
warnings that we often get the idea that God is an angry God or the Old
Testament God is an angry God. Nothing
can be farther than the truth. The
prophets, especially the 8th century prophets, were those who could
see what was coming because what the people were not meeting the needs of the
society. When a society is out of
balance, bad things happen.
I am not a financier and I don’t play the stock market, but
even I could have told you that the financial meltdown of 2007 was going to
happen because the watchmen who were supposed to be guarding the commonweal
were asleep. We had no regulation which could
prevent the greedy from robbing us all. And while we were not carried off into
slavery, as were the Jews, I would suggest that the social disintegration has
been just as severe. We had become as inured
to the needs of the commonweal as were
the Israelites.
We may be losing the foundations upon which our nation is
founded too because we are allowing partisan politics to block any legislation
that helps the commonweal. We are even hearing from some that perhaps democracy
isn't the best form of government and yet we fight wars to make others free for
democracy. What is that about???
We are seeing the social strides that were
made by those who laid their lives on the line a generation ago being rolled
back rather than tweaking them to make them flexible to meet new duties. We have prophets in our world today in our
Churches too. We have become so
convinced of our right to say and do things because of the privileges that we
enjoy that we have forgotten what the Church is for.
In the Gospel we have for today we hear the story of Mary
and Martha. Jesus does not tell us what
the Church is for. He tells of what his
followers are to
Martha symbolizes the work that becomes an obsession. It is when we in the Church are so caught up
in doing the work of the Church that we have lost our reason for our
being. We
begin to complain about all those others who don’t do anything—who just come
and go home and don’t contribute and don’t attend the potluck. But Mary is the one that Jesus says has the
better part. She has stopped to hear the
word of Christ. Mary is out of the
ordinary—she isn't doing what women were supposed to do. She listened.
The Church—society as a whole, has become so ‘worried and
distracted over so many things’ that we have lost the ability to just listen,
to sit at Jesus’ feet, to listen to one another, to appreciate God’s
creation. We have lost the reason for
our being so that we can be caught up in the pattern of greed that sells our
inheritance—the inheritance of joy, balance, and peace that we are promised in
God’s love.
We have created a privileged class of clergy who keep busy
and keep us busy that we are becoming incapable of sitting at the feet of the
Holy One. When was the last time we had silence as a
part of the liturgy? When were we more
worried about how we ‘did’ the Eucharist than how the Eucharist was done in
us?
I daresay that this is not a sermon that ‘plays’ well in
parishes because there is so much to do to keep the parish running. But it is that constant need to support the
institution that keeps us as followers of Jesus from knowing him
intimately. It also means that few
really enter into that relationship with the Holy One and embrace the ‘thin
place’ of the Incarnation where God and humanity come together. And until we are willing to not spend hours
trying to address who is mowing the lawn, or how we are going to pay the air
conditioning bill, and sit at the feet of Jesus just to listen, the Church will
continue to be the ‘bared ruin choirs’ for future generations.
The Church’s purpose is to connect people to God. If we are unwilling to listen, we don’t
deserve to exist. AMEN
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