Psalm Meditation 1019
First Sunday After Christmas
December 29, 2019

Psalm 7
1 O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
2 or like a lion they will tear me apart; they will drag me away, with no one to rescue.
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my ally with harm or plundered my foe without cause,
5 then let the enemy pursue and overtake me, trample my life to the ground, and lay my soul in the dust. Selah
6 Rise up, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake, O my God; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered around you, and over it take your seat on high.
8 The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous, you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.
10 God is my shield, who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.
12 If one does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and strung his bow;
13 he has prepared his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 See how they conceive evil, and are pregnant with mischief, and bring forth lies.
15 They make a pit, digging it out, and fall into the hole that they have made.
16 Their mischief returns upon their own heads, and on their own heads their violence descends.
17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
(NRSV)

Taking responsibility for something that goes bad is not an easy thing to do. It is easier to make ourselves into victims than it is to accept responsibility for our actions when the consequences of a series of events leads to a bad result for us. I was caught by the caveat the psalmist makes in verses 3-5, ‘if I have done any of the things of which I am accused, let the full force of retaliation come to me. I am willing to die and be consigned to hell if I am guilty.’ The psalmist begins with the admission of the possibility of personal responsibility.

Once that is settled the psalmist asks God to rise up, preside over a trial, and punish those who have done evil and mischief. Since the psalmist was not struck down mid-sentence the psalm lays out the fate of those who are unrepentantly evil. God is not one to shrug off the evils we bring on others. One of my mentors said, “We are not so much punished for our sin as we are by our sin.” Our actions have consequences and someone has to receive the promise or pay the cost for those actions. It would be fair if we could count on the perpetrator of sin and evil paying the price for any evil act. We know that it is usually an innocent person who bears the brunt of another’s evil. When someone is careless or reckless, at best, callous, at worst, behind the wheel of a vehicle someone else gets hurt or killed by the driver’s actions.

My favorite substitute teacher would not allow a student to tattle on another without first admitting what they had done to cause or complicate the situation. When confronted with the possibility of shared guilt and punishment, the tattling lessened considerably in the classes my wife, my favorite sub, taught. The psalmist models a way to pray against those we feel are out to get us. We start with the possibility that we bear some of the guilt for what is happening to us and around us. Once we get that log out of our own eye we can see clearly to ask God to judge the rest of the guilty parties as well. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.”

December 23, 2019
LCM