Psalm Meditation 1076 Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany January 31, 2021 Psalm 141 1 I call upon you, O Lord; come quickly to me; give ear to my voice when I call to you. 2 Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. 3 Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips. 4 Do not turn my heart to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with those who work iniquity; do not let me eat of their delicacies. 5 Let the righteous strike me; let the faithful correct me. Never let the oil of the wicked anoint my head, for my prayer is continually against their wicked deeds. 6 When they are given over to those who shall condemn them, then they shall learn that my words were pleasant. 7 Like a rock that one breaks apart and shatters on the land, so shall their bones be strewn at the mouth of Sheol. 8 But my eyes are turned toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenseless. 9 Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me, and from the snares of evildoers. 10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I alone escape. (NRSV) It is easy to confess the sins of others and to ask God to keep those other people from acting on their sinful plans. We have so little information about their motives that we can simply decide that their whole goal and desire is to make life difficult for us. It is, after all, all about us. The psalmist does do some mind reading, deciding that wicked people are aware that they are being wicked. For the most part, the psalmist is focused on personal responsibility. ‘God keep me from stepping in to the wicked acts I see others doing. Allow me to be punished and corrected by those I see as good and godly people. I have seen too many people destroyed by their own wickedness and don’t want to be one of them.’ How would our lives be different if we were more intent on keeping ourselves from falling in to sin as opposed to judging others on our perception of their sinfulness? What if we made covenants with people like us, people who share a set of values, so that we make a deal to correct each other before we get deeply ingrained in actions that we see as undesirable within ourselves? And, what if our focus was on God rather than on a set of impossible standards that we expect everyone to live up to? We would likely find out that the love of God makes a lot of our perfectionist goals unnecessary. January 25, 2021 LCM