Psalm Meditation 718
Third Sunday in Lent
March 23, 2014

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)

The desire for revenge may be one of the things that makes us human. We want those who have done wrong or evil to pay a price for their actions. The psalmist takes an important step in these verses; recognizing the possibility of personal fault. The psalmist is open to receive punishment at the hand of enemies if there is any fault on the part of the writer. It seems like a good place to start any rant against our enemies. I wonder if our various tirades about our enemies would be any different if we would begin each one with the acknowledgement of the possibility that we may have contributed to this situation, or that we might be guilty of the same kind or evil toward someone else.

To be able to confess our own failings and evil inclinations may soften the judgments we ask God to rain down on the folks who have done evil to us. If God punishes everyone who is guilty with the punishment I request for those who have done me dirty, I might want to tone down my request a bit if the same fate will fall to me for similar behavior. It may not, probably won’t, make us any less hurt and angry about the harm that has come to us in any given moment. Over the course of our lives we may find ourselves willing to put ourselves into the skins of those we perceive as evil. We may find ourselves able to see a human side to the most evil of people.

This does not mean that we will not be hurt and angered by the things that happen to us in our lives. It certainly does not mean that there is not evil in the world; both intentional and inadvertent. It does leave us open to the possibility that we are, each and all, human and in need of forgiveness and love in the face of who we are and what we do. We may also realize that the loving presence of God we crave is available even to the most vile person in our lives. While our inclination is to pray that God will physically wipe out our enemies, it seems that the inclination of God is to love us in spite of and because of who we are.

March 17, 2014