Psalm Meditation 638
Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
September 9, 2012

Psalm 52
1 Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? All day long
2 you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery.
3 You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth. (Selah)
4 You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
5 But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. (Selah)
6 The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer, saying,
7 "See the one who would not take refuge in God, but trusted in abundant riches, and sought refuge in wealth!"
8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.
9 I will thank you forever, because of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your name, for it is good.
(NRSV)

I have heard folks say, and have said it myself, “If you want to know what your priorities are, see where you spend most of your money.” Whether we like it or not, we tend to put our money toward what we think is important in our lives. Then I see verse 7 of this psalm, and realize that judging our priorities by the money we invest is placing money as a priority over God. When we can discover our priorities by how we spend our money, we have put wealth and riches in the center of our lives.

That doesn’t mean we get rid of our money and other wealth assets. It does mean we have to make a way in our lives to put God at the center of our lives. We have to find a way to determine priorities and worth that are not centered in abundant riches and wealth. For the folks of the psalmist’s day, the belief was that there was a set amount of wealth available, so the only way anyone could get rich was by taking wealth from others. While we have expanded our concept of the limits of wealth, there is a point at which we question whether a person is worth what they receive and how much help those riches could offer if given to other causes.

In all of this, it still comes down to money. How do we determine a person’s worth in the context of God and our relationship with God? It is a problem in a society that likes to know where we rate in relation to those around us. In the eyes of God we are each seen as having infinite worth. In the eyes of God there is no ranking system of faithfulness, righteousness or other categories of worth. In the eyes of God we are each unique and incomparable.

To be in the world we will likely always have a rating and ranking system in which we will be placed by ourselves and others. To be citizen’s of heaven we recognize that we are each of infinite worth and that God loves each of us as if we were the only one. In our relations with each other, as children of God we no longer use the rating systems of the world as we see each other through the eyes of God.

September 3, 2012