Hilton Head Island, SC – January 6, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 72:1-20
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor! – Palm 72:4
Psalm 72 is a strange Psalm. It says in the superscription before the first verse that it is a Psalm of Solomon. If so, it’s the only Psalm by Solomon in the whole Book of Psalms. Furthermore, the last verse of Psalm 72 is a peculiar one, if indeed this is a Psalm of Solomon, because verse 20 says, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.”
Why would it say that as the last verse of Psalm 72, if Solomon wrote Psalm 72? And anyway, “The prayers of David” are not ended with Psalm 72, because there are other prayers and psalms of David later in the book of Psalms. So just what is going on here?
Here is what I think might have happened. The Book of Psalms was no doubt put together by a committee long after most of the Psalms had been written. Committees are notorious about making decisions which do not meet with the approval of everyone. In the first place, why did they choose the numerical order for the Psalms they chose? Why didn’t they put all of the Psalms of David in one group, and then the Psalms of other identified authors in another group, and then all the Psalms which did not list authors in another group?
More to the point for this sermon, why did they call this a Psalm of Solomon, especially since Solomon is never again listed as having written any other Psalms? Perhaps, and maybe even probably, it was David who wrote this Psalm as a prayer on behalf of his son Solomon, who followed him on the throne of Israel. Instead of being “A Psalm of Solomon,” perhaps, it is “A Psalm for Solomon,” written by Solomon’s father before David died, and the monarchy was turned over to Solomon. It is easy to imagine that “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, (were) ended,” when David finished this particular Psalm, because he may have been very close to death.
Transitions from one ruler to the next are often very difficult and dicey. Will it work? Can the successor fill the shoes of the predecessor? Will the people affirm the transition, or will they rise up in protest? The people of England were so put off by King Charles I that they deposed him, and he was executed. Then, after Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth period, they reinstituted Charles the First’s son, Charles, as King Charles II. But they soon concluded they had had enough Stuart monarchs, so they looked to the House of Hanover, and made George I the king. Would Czar Nicholas II do as well as Alexander III? Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin thought not, and we know how that turned out. Would John Adams be as effective a President as George Washington? Almost no one, maybe even Adams’ son, Pres. John Quincy Adams, thought so.
There was no pattern of succession for the kings of Israel when David was king. They had had only one king before, Saul. King Saul was not a good king, and he probably suffered from some form of mental illness. David became king after Saul because presumably God wanted David to be the king, and David was recognized as the greatest contemporary leader in Israel by the great majority of Israelites. But there was no tradition or custom for how one king would follow another. It was David’s wife Bathsheba who demanded of David that her son Solomon should succeed David. David may have acceded to her wishes simply because he had caused her so many problems throughout their stormy marriage. He figured he owed her one.
If there is any truth to any of these speculations I have cast before you, it may be all the more probable David composed Psalm 72 as a prayer to God on behalf of his Solomon, whom he sensed was almost certainly to follow him on the throne of Israel. And so he began with an earnest entreaty to the Almighty, “Give the king Thy justice, O God, and Thy righteousness to the royal son! May he judge the people with righteousness, and Thy poor with justice!” (Ps. 72:1-2)
Apparently the Israelites believed more firmly that God was the ultimate power behind the throne than Americans believe that about our government. Americans, more than most other peoples in the western world, tend to think that it is God who constantly guides us, and that whatever we do as a nation receives perpetual divine approval. That, of course, is a debatable notion, but it is a very influential one among our citizens, nonetheless.
So it was that David (or Solomon) prayed to God, “May (the king) live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations! May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth! In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more!” (Psalm 72:5-7) It is obvious poetic hyperbole, but it was a heartfelt prayer, nonetheless. Of all the kings of Israel, no one knew more keenly than David how much the monarch needed confidence to fulfill his divinely-appointed mission, and he also knew he needed God’s grace to be able to function in a very taxing vocation.
It needs to be said that a king has much more official authority than a president, especially an absolute monarch, which is what both David and Solomon were. Perhaps many of our presidents have wished that they were kings, but they weren’t, and that is a good thing. Still, American presidents have more power than any other heads of state in the world, and whoever is the President of the United States has an almost impossible job. Why anyone would seek the office is psychological and political mystery, but there are always people willing to give it a try.
Verses 8 through 11 of this Psalm are as Israel-centric sentiments as can be found anywhere in the Bible, of which there are a plentiful plethora. “May (the king) have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth! May his foes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust! May the kings of Tarshish [in Spain] and of the isles [Sicily? Malta? Crete? Cyprus?] render him tribute, and may the kings of Sheba and Seba [in Africa and Arabia] bring him gifts! May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!”
Such thoughts would not likely endear other nations to anyone who thinks like that. These are not words to engender great respect among other peoples. But if it was David who was uttering this prayer to God as a plea to God for his son Solomon, who soon would follow him as king of Israel, David knew Solomon would need all the help he could get, and this hyperbolic language was a poet’s means of imploring divine assistance for Solomon.
On the other hand, it is conceivable that Psalm 72 may actually have been a prayer of Solomon, and it may have been written on behalf of his father David. As he grew older, and watched his father make great decisions but also great mistakes, Solomon may have been moved to pray that God would bless his father, for Solomon was in a position to realize how much David, or any king, needed God’s blessings. As Shakespeare so sagaciously observed, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Anything that could ease the burden would be appreciated.
The last four American Presidential elections have been unusually close: the two for George W. Bush, and the two for Barack Obama. Congress has been strongly divided for the past twelve years, and it appears that will likely be the situation for the next four years as well. Despite those political realities, however, President Obama is the first two-term President since FDR to win two elections by a majority of all the votes cast.
Nonetheless, as has been painfully evident, that electoral result has not been translated into any particular political advantage as Barack Obama prepares for his second term. The interminable and intemperate debate over the so-called fiscal cliff is evidence of that fact. If the President gained anything from his election on Tuesday evening, Nov. 6, 2012, it seemed to have entirely evaporated by 8 AM the next day. It has been a hard slog for him to make it to the new year, and there is nothing to suggest his responsibilities shall get any easier to turn into discernible deeds.
It can never be objectively determined how much of the resistance to the President is cleverly disguised racism, but surely some of his opposition is based on his race. He came into office with the worst economic recession since the 1930s already underway, and he had been battling that enormous obstacle ever since. Perhaps the only other President from Illinois, the Man from Springfield, has had as tough an assignment entering the presidency as the Man from Chicago. And, as the recent movie Lincoln so forcefully illustrated, these times politically are amazingly similar to those of the years of our Civil War. We now are having a political civil war that is most uncivil, but happily it is being fought, thus far, without benefit of actual weapons.
The text for this sermon, whoever it was who wrote it, says of the king of Israel, “May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor!” (Ps. 72:4) Throughout the Bible there are literally scores of verses which express a concern for poor and needy people. All religious people of any religion should either have or should develop an innate proclivity toward assisting those who live in poverty and want.
Either by inner inclination or by having learned it early in life, Barack Obama has a tendency to want to help those who have too little income and too few prospects for improving on their situation. Biblically, it is impossible to fault him for that. However, he is probably not as liberal as ultra-conservatives suppose, or as conservative as ultra-liberals suppose. He has frequently stated that he wants to seek compromise between opposing factions in order to accomplish political goals that are both reasonable and possible. For four years, though, he has accomplished relatively little. He seems more interested in negotiating than in leading, and that is not necessarily a desirable trait in a President.
We went to see the movie version of Les Miserables. It is perhaps the best movie adaptation ever of a stage musical. When Jean Valjean was singing “Who Am I?”, I thought of Barack Obama. “If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned. I am the master of hundreds of workers. They all look to me. Can I abandon them? How would they live if I am not free?” No matter what he does, the President will engender angry opposition. Millions of Americans depend on his decisions, but by himself he can decide almost nothing. He needs the support and affirmation of people in both parties to do anything of substance, but will he lead?
It is in the arena of “crushing the oppressor” where our President may have the most suspect record. He came into office being one of few Senators vocally to oppose the war in Iraq before it was declared (though not by any Act of Congress), but from the beginning he was a supporter of the war in Afghanistan. It is hard if not impossible for anyone to argue persuasively that the Americans, Iraqis or Afghans are better off because of either of those wars, and especially because of both of them. Our economic malaise has been intensified by ten years of unending conflicts in the Middle East and Southern Asia, none of which was ever budgeted. It was all paid for by means of borrowed funds. And while the President managed to get us out of Iraq, we are not yet out of Afghanistan, and we might still be there after the deadline of 2014 passes us by.
Is this nation better off because the Constitution names the President as Commander-in-Chief? Would we be better served if crushing oppressors were not vested in one government official, but rather in two or more? Might it be politically preferable to have a triumvirate as Commanders-in-Chief, say the President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of State? Would it be an improvement to have a 2-1 majority or a 3-0 unanimity in major military matters? Is a single Commander-in-Chief more likely to attempt to crush the oppressor than a triumvirate of thinkers? Those who willfully seek to crush the oppressor will likely find themselves sooner or later oppressed; it goes with the terrible territory.
Great Presidents are never considered great during their terms in office, or even during their lifetimes, with the exception of George Washington. Lincoln was despised by millions of people, Teddy Roosevelt was thought too autocratic by many of his contemporaries, FDR evinced oodles of vitriol for all twelve of the years he served in the Oval Office, and Truman is still judged to be a stumblebum by a sizeable percentage of our population. On the basis of what he has accomplished thus far, Barack Obama is very unlikely to be placed in the top tier of our national chief executives. He might do great things in a second term if his political opponents were not such dedicated detractors and unrepentant reactionaries.
Will this country be in a better place after eight years if almost nothing of significance is accomplished, especially when so much needs to be done? We don’t have a king, which is almost certainly a blessing, but can God bless a President whom partisan members of Congress insist on emaciating? What is wrong with an electorate who continue to send people to Congress from both parties who are the epitome of inflexibility? If we have an ineffective President, is it because we have an ineffective Congress and an ineffective electorate? Do all of us deserve what we have experienced over the past four years? And if it continues for another four years, shall we deserve even more national decay, although probably at an increasing pace?
It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.” Our current President has been unable even to float mighty ideas, because his opponents have succeeded in preventing him from bringing up such ideas for a vote in Congress. Whether he shall be consigned to take rank with poor spirits remains to be seen.
Many Americans are far less enthusiastic about Barack Obama than they were in 2008. He has had his opportunities, to be sure, but they have been very difficult, and they were fraught with pitfalls and obstacles. Can God bless Barack Obama as President of the United States of America if the United States of America refuses to accept blessings from anyone, unless they come packaged in the properly preferred partisan packages? Can God bless America if America persists in refusing to be either a blessing or to be blessed?
A plea for our President is, in effect, a plea for our entire people. Do we want progress, or not? On the basis of the vote to avert the fiscal cliff, evidently not. And what a sorry indictment that is on the United States of America.
O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry.