Psalm Meditation 883
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2017

Psalm 83
1 O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
2 Even now your enemies are in tumult; those who hate you have raised their heads.
3 They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against those you protect.
4 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more.”
5 They conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant—
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Assyria also has joined them; they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah
9 Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the Wadi Kishon,
10 who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, “Let us take the pastures of God for our own possession.”
13 O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.
14 As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
15 so pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane.
16 Fill their faces with shame, so that they may seek your name, O LORD.
17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace.
18 Let them know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.
(NRSV)

We may spend more time and energy worrying about how our enemies see us and think about us than they actually spend thinking about us at all. It is within the realm of possibility that we while are fretting over their plans for our destruction they are thinking about our plans for their destruction or not thinking about us at all. At some point in the Cold War with the, then, Soviet Union someone realized that we were not building and stockpiling bombs and armaments to destroy each other but to protect ourselves from the other. Each time one side got a new weapon the other side felt the need to get one too; a bigger, newer, more powerful weapon than ‘those people’ had. We got to the point of mutually assured destruction by attempting to protect ourselves. Both sides had demonized and dehumanized each other to the point that we could not see each other as anything other than enemies.

Is that what was happening in the psalmist’s mind? I am sure that there was real animosity between the various nations listed in the psalm. It was likely based in fact and experience of confrontations with ‘those people.’ Since each nation had their own set of deities and divinities it was easy to add those divine powers to the array of weapons to use against our foes. If it was a pretty even match of size and strength both sides may have worried about the intentions of the other. If it was a serious power imbalance, the side with the greater strength may have nearly forgotten the other side existed and let the small nations eat themselves up with worry over the intentions of the powerful group.

No matter the conflict or the size of the other side, we may be tempted to give ‘them’ more power than they actually have, or more interest in us than they possess. And while it is always good to turn to God in times of trouble, it seems to be a misunderstanding of the type of power God wields for us to spend time and energy calling on God to destroy our enemies in a series of calamitous events. The question may not be how to destroy our enemies so much as how to live with those with whom we disagree, including those who really do intend to wipe us from the face of the earth for any number of reasons.

May 15, 2017
LCM