Psalm Meditation 527
Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 25, 2010

Psalm 50 selected verses
1 The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
3 Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
5 "Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!"
7 "Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God.
8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.
12 "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.
13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.
15 Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."
16 But to the wicked God says: "What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips?
17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.
18 You make friends with a thief when you see one, and you keep company with adulterers.
19 "You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
20 You sit and speak against your kin; you slander your own mother's child.
21 These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.
22 "Mark this, then, you who forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.
23 Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me; to those who go the right way I will show the salvation of God."
(NRSV)

If you have ever done something good or polite for someone and they did not acknowledge your act you have an idea of what pushed God’s buttons in this psalm. Folks were going through the motions of sacrifice. They brought the right animals and went through the right motions and walked away unchanged. There were likely folk who performed their sacrifice with a great deal of resentment since they could have used that animal for themselves. In this psalm God reminds people that it is not the animal of sacrifice in which God is interested, God already has access to all the animals in creation. God is interested in receiving thanks from us.

It is often said that God does not need our thanks and praise. At one level this is true. God does not need our thanks and praise any more than we need to be thanked for anything we have done. When we let someone cut in front of us in a line of cars or people there is no law that requires the other to acknowledge our action. It does add a deeper element of joy to the transaction when our small sacrifice is acknowledged.

God will continue to be God and will continue to be gracious and generous and merciful to us no matter how we may respond. This psalm reminds us that the things we receive from God are gifts given out of God’s love for us. There is no requirement that we offer our thanks in return for any of the gifts we receive. We are reminded that as we offer thanks to God and to others we find ourselves more open to and better able to receive other gifts with a deeper sense of gratitude.

© July 19, 2010