Psalm Meditation 854
Proper 26
October 30, 2016

Psalm 108
1 My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make melody. Awake, my soul!
2 Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn.
3 I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you among the nations.
4 For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.
6 Give victory with your right hand, and answer me, so that those whom you love may be rescued.
7 God has promised in his sanctuary: “With exultation I will divide up Shechem, and portion out the Vale of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet; Judah is my scepter.
9 Moab is my washbasin; on Edom I hurl my shoe; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
10 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go out, O God, with our armies.
12 O grant us help against the foe, for human help is worthless.
13 With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes.
(NRSV)

When things are going well, God is with us. When things are going badly, God has abandoned us. It is a pretty simple formula of who God is and what we can expect. And it worked for the psalmist and the people of that time. Their experience was based on the rule of kings who held absolute sway over every aspect of life, and death, in the kingdom. Since kings hold that kind of power over people, God must hold that kind of power too.

God can decide without warning to change the course of peoples’ lives. On a bad day, life can be made miserable out of nowhere. People were willing to believe that something must have happened, they must have done something, to push God’s buttons whether it could be readily identified or not. On a good day, God had smiled on us for some unknown action on our part. While God has the power to change lives, it is in response to what we have done or left undone in our relationship with God.

At some point we realized that this means that God is reacting to us, and that robs God of the power to act in our lives. What if God loves us and chooses to be present among us no matter what? When things are going well, God is present among us. When things are going poorly, God is present among us. In our celebrations the presence of God reminds us that we are not the sole architects of our lives so that we celebrate with a touch of humility. In our trials the presence of God reminds us that we are not alone, no matter what.

October 24, 2016
LCM