Psalm Meditation 585
Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time
September 4, 2011

Psalm 101
1 I will sing of loyalty and of justice; to you, O LORD, I will sing.
2 I will study the way that is blameless. When shall I attain it? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house;
3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is base. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.
4 Perverseness of heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.
5 One who secretly slanders a neighbor I will destroy. A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate.
6 I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, so that they may live with me; whoever walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me.
7 No one who practices deceit shall remain in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue in my presence.
8 Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the LORD.
(NRSV)

Many of us have the goal of ridding the world, or at least our area, of all of the bad and evil people who populate it. Many of us take a path other than the psalmist pledges to take. The first step in the process is to turn to God. In the presence of God the psalmist will concentrate on loyalty to God and a concern for justice. To make it all easier to remember and more interesting it will all be set to music. As we want to set our world right it is a good idea to start with a relationship with God, especially one built on loyalty and justice. The loyalty reminds us that we have picked sides and will support the side we have picked. The justice reminds us that we will put more emphasis on doing the right thing than on winning.

The second step in the process is to work on ourselves. Rather than finding fault with the ways everyone else is living their lives we will concentrate on putting our own lives in order. As we work toward our own blameless life we will find less and less time to pick at the faults and flaws of the folks around us. We may even find ourselves sympathetic to some of those faults as we deal with them in ourselves first. As we concentrate on what it means to be lined up with God we may find we have less time for and interest in looking for the flaws in others. The flaws will still be there; we will simply have other things to do than look for them.

Once we have our own lives in order we can begin the process of ridding others of their faults. At the very least we will separate ourselves from all those whose sins and faults and flaws harm us and those around us. One of the images of perfect people is that it is annoying to be in their presence as they find fault with everyone around them. Turns out that those are the perfectionists, who find fault as a way of deflecting their own imperfections. The perfect people, and even some of those who are approaching perfection, are patient with those of us who have a ways to go. We discover that their method of destruction is to coach us and win us over rather than to actually destroy us.

God stands in the midst of the whole process, coaching and winning folks into relationships of loyalty, justice and music.

August 29, 2011