Psalm Meditation 587
Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
September 18, 2011

Psalm 12
1 Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind.
2 They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, "With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own--who is our master?"
5 "Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up," says the LORD; "I will place them in the safety for which they long."
6 The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure, silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.
7 You, O LORD, will protect us; you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among humankind.
(NRSV)

I have discovered through the years that the crowd of which I am a part is made up of people like me, whether I like it or not. I couldn’t understand how I kept attracting friends with a particular mindset until someone used that same term to describe me. If the psalmist was not one of the folks being described in the first part of the psalm there was at least a strong temptation to be like that. It is possible that this group is keeping the psalmist as a mascot or pet; the one of whom they make fun for the quaint ways of faithfulness.

It is just as possible that while the psalmist denies the lying and flattering personally while seeing it in the rest of the group that it is just as visible to everyone else in the psalmist. If, as in this case, one has become adept at lying and flattering it is just as possible to lie to and flatter oneself as anyone else. At the same time the psalmist is aware that this is not the way people of God are supposed to act. If God were to destroy all these flattering, lying people none of us would have to be subjected to this type of behavior ever again.

Fortunately for us, God is not one to destroy enemies in a cloud of atomic particles. God usually works more slowly, prodding and cajoling us out of our current behaviors and into more helpful and faithful ways of behaving and thinking. When we grow weary of our hurtful, harmful ways we find ways to withdraw from one circle of influence so that we can be more easily drawn into a new circle of friends who fit our new choices and convictions. And through it all God is with us, offering us safety and protection from people like we used to be as we become the people we find ourselves wanting to be.

September 12, 2011