Psalm Meditation 847
Proper 19
September 11, 2016

Psalm 95
1 O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”
11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”
(NRSV)

The psalmist can be seen drawing a distinction between our God and the gods of others. Those people have a god of the depths, a god of the mountains, a god of the sea, and of the earth. Our people have one God who created all of those things and rules over them. In part it is cultural competitiveness, as one group makes light of another in order to win some contest in which our side makes the rules and decides the outcome. We rig the contest so that we win. The question continues to this day; are there multiple deities from which to choose or is there one?

We make the statement of faith that there is only one God. Then it gets interesting. Some people go on to say that this group or that group couldn’t possibly worship our God because they have other demands placed on them by their faith. In other cases, there are multiple deities with separate names and attributes, with different realms of power and influence. Some of us are quick to dismiss these folks as not worshipping the God we worship. If there is only one God, and I believe that, each religion touches a differing interpretation of who God is and the demands placed on us because of that.

I tend to see friends and family in a positive light. I know people who do not hold the same opinion of these people. Is one of us right and one of us wrong? Perhaps. It is just as likely that we have had different sets of experiences with this person. Does it seem as if we are talking about two different people when we apply our various filters to our opinions on someone? Definitely. Despite our different experiences and opinions we have the same person in mind. If we can do that with each other, we can certainly do that with God, who is beyond our ability to know and comprehend fully.

September 5, 2016
LCM