Psalm Meditation 817
First Sunday in Lent
February 14, 2016

Psalm 123
1 To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until he has mercy upon us.
3 Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
4 Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.
(NRSV)

The hand of the master and mistress are where servants receive both praise and punishment. My guess is that servants were more likely to be the recipients of punishment than praise. A servant or slave was likely treated as invisible until a mistake was made or a fault was found. At those moments that servant was going to be on the receiving end of a backhand slap across the face. It was a good idea to keep an eye on the hand of one’s master or mistress in order to anticipate the punishment.

The psalmist’s request for mercy for God is recognition that God is much more willing to be merciful than any other master or mistress. It is also an opportunity to lament to God the treatment received at the hands of all the others in authority. Then, as now, there are those who, if they see them at all, will look with disgust or pity on those they see as beneath them. While there are always those willing to give themselves over to those who offer the remotest chance to rise above those around them, the psalmist and others are weary of being treated as invisible pets and property.

When we find our worth in God we discover that we no longer need to bind ourselves to those who take advantage of our effort on their behalf and give us little to no acknowledgement of our contribution. In God we discover that we are each of infinite worth as we are. In God we discover that all of us together are of infinite worth as well. The individuals are bound into communities of sacred worth and loved by God beyond measure no matter what.

February 8, 2016
LCM