Psalm Meditation 962
Reign of Christ
November 25, 2018

Psalm 144
1 Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle;
2 my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under me.
3 O LORD, what are human beings that you regard them, or mortals that you think of them?
4 They are like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.
5 Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains so that they smoke.
6 Make the lightning flash and scatter them; send out your arrows and rout them.
7 Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens,
8 whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false.
9 I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,
10 the one who gives victory to kings, who rescues his servant David.
11 Rescue me from the cruel sword, and deliver me from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false.
12 May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars, cut for the building of a palace.
13 May our barns be filled, with produce of every kind; may our sheep increase by thousands, by tens of thousands in our fields,
14 and may our cattle be heavy with young. May there be no breach in the walls, no exile, and no cry of distress in our streets.
15 Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the LORD.
(NRSV)

A great way to turn an adversary into an enemy is to demonize them. Turn folks into aliens who only deal in falsehood and violence and we are well on our way to having an enemy with whom we need no contact whatsoever. If we can’t bring ourselves to paint ‘those people’ as liars, killers, and cheats we can at least paint them as idiots who wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and slapped them in the face. Currently, we are even doing this with each other. People of other parties and perspectives, people with strong beliefs with which we disagree are branded as evil and alien.

Interestingly, when we meet face to face we can carry on conversations as if we saw the other as mistaken rather than pure evil. It is from a distance that we are able to fire our various slings and arrows. The distance is not always geographic, it can also be in ways that are more psychological than physical. If I already believe that you are one of ‘them’ the barriers I place between us will be insurmountable even by contact.

When we see ‘those’ people as children of God, as redeemed by the same power and presence as ourselves, we begin to heal our rifts and divisions. When we can look past our disagreements to see a person with faults and flaws as well as with hopes and dreams, we see a whole person with whom we have a disagreement rather than an evil presence taking up space in a world that belongs to me and my kind. I am sure that God loves more folks than any one of us believes is possible. “Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the LORD.”

November 19, 2018
LCM