Psalm Meditation 970
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
January 20, 2019

Psalm 48
1 Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. His holy mountain,
2 beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.
3 Within its citadels God has shown himself a sure defense.
4 Then the kings assembled, they came on together.
5 As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic, they took to flight;
6 trembling took hold of them there, pains as of a woman in labor,
7 as when an east wind shatters the ships of Tarshish.
8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God establishes forever. Selah
9 We ponder your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.
10 Your name, O God, like your praise, reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
11 Let Mount Zion be glad, let the towns of Judah rejoice because of your judgments.
12 Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers,
13 consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation
14 that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever.
(NRSV)

At some point in my childhood the big brag was, ‘My dad can beat up your dad.’ Thinking back, that was not really a day to day conversation that any of us had, it was the set up for a joke or the plot of a TV show. There may be children and dads who feel the need to be the biggest and strongest, however that was not really a topic of discussion among the people around whom I grew up. The psalmist seems to be doing that kind of bragging about the LORD.

“Our God is bigger and better than yours, and, on top of that, the city where our God dwells is better than yours, too.” The psalmist continues the boast by letting the audience know that when all the rulers of the world gathered against us, they were so astounded by the city of God that they turned and ran away, each to their own nation. That is a pretty impressive picture. One of my professors told me, that despite the brags in Scripture, Israel was a small nation that spent more time under the thumb of larger nations than it did as a free, self governed realm. Even if the brags about the nation are a little over the top doesn’t mean that the bragging about the LORD are in the same category.

It is not the bigger and stronger parts that make the LORD the God for us, it is the steadfast love. Even when we get caught up in the competition over whose divinity is the biggest and strongest, the LORD, YHWH, loves us beyond measure and comprehension. It turns out that it is not really about us and what we do, it is about God, who chooses to love us no matter who we are and what we do. I have a t-shirt that says, “Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.” I believe that each one of us could wear one of those shirts at the same time and it would be a true and accurate statement about how God loves each of us.

January 14, 2019
LCM