Psalm Meditation 1090 Sixth Sunday of Easter May 9, 2021 Psalm 94 1 O Lord, you God of vengeance, you God of vengeance, shine forth! 2 Rise up, O judge of the earth; give to the proud what they deserve! 3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult? 4 They pour out their arrogant words; all the evildoers boast. 5 They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. 6 They kill the widow and the stranger, they murder the orphan, 7 and they say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.” 8 Understand, O dullest of the people; fools, when will you be wise? 9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? 10 He who disciplines the nations, he who teaches knowledge to humankind, does he not chastise? 11 The Lord knows our thoughts, that they are but an empty breath. 12 Happy are those whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law, 13 giving them respite from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked. 14 For the Lord will not forsake his people; he will not abandon his heritage; 15 for justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it. 16 Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers? 17 If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence. 18 When I thought, “My foot is slipping,” your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. 19 When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. 20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who contrive mischief by statute? 21 They band together against the life of the righteous, and condemn the innocent to death. 22 But the Lord has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge. 23 He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the Lord our God will wipe them out. (NRSV) We are a lot quicker to call on God to give ‘those’ people what they deserve than we are to ask that God give us what we deserve. Even though ‘those’ people probably do deserve all the bad things we are quick to wish on them, we do well to be aware that we are just as likely to deserve those bad things as well. We know that our intentions were good even if things didn’t turn out the way we meant for them to. We are willing to guess that their intentions were evil, since we are the ones who got hurt when their actions turned out badly. So, intention is the best way to judge our actions and results are the only way we have to judge the actions of any of ‘those’ people. Even when it turns out the same way for us and ‘them’ we know that we can be forgiven and they need to be wiped out by God’s wrath, because we did not mean to hurt people. If we do find out that ‘they’ didn’t mean to hurt anyone they still need to pay for their actions because it was us who received the ill effects of their poorly thought out plans. We also have the advantage of mental gymnastics that make our hurt real because we have feelings while they don’t have feelings because they are a class of sub-human creatures in human form. Before we call on God to seek vengeance on the people who hurt us, we do well to search our lives and motives to see if we have done any damage to them at this or another time. We may have been in the way of their unfocused anger, we may be the victim of their lack of care, they may be paying us back for something we did to them years ago, we may both bear some guilt and responsibility for an upward spiral of vindictiveness. Before we call down the wrath of God on those who are guilty, we do well to make sure that we are not partly to blame. May 3, 2021 LCM lcrsmanifold@att.net http://psalmmeditations.blogspot.com/