Hilton Head Island, SC – April 14, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 74
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Arise, O God, plead thy cause; remember how the impious scoff at thee all the day! – Psalm 74:22 (RSV)
Last week we had a sermon based on a Psalm written by a man named Asaph. Today we have another one, and we will have two more over the next two Sundays.
I said last week that Asaph was a man appointed by David to be a leader of the singers who sang in public services of worship in Jerusalem. I did not know that fact myself; I must admit. A commentary on the Book of Psalms told me. And how I happened to have that commentary is a story in itself. We are all very sorry that John Melin is moving to France with his wife Barbara, and I will say more about that next Sunday when we have a brunch in honor of the Melins. One benefit of this move, however, is that John has loaned me all his biblical commentaries and some other books. I am especially grateful to him for doing this. When I left the pastorate of First Presbyterian Church on the island in 1996, I mistakenly thought I would not be returning to the ministry. Therefore I gave away all my commentaries to Mepkin Abbey, the Trappist monastery near Moncks Corner, SC, except for my collection of New Testament commentaries by William Barclay. By the way, I’m an honorary member of Mepkin, and also Congregation Beth Yam. A regular ecumaniac I am. But obviously I was wrong in 1996 when I concluded I would probably never preach again.
Thus in every sermon I have preached since 1996 I have been flying by the seat of my pants, without the benefit of biblical scholars, except when I referred to Dr. Barclay’s comments. But now I have John Melin’s commentaries, and now you will learn many things about biblical passages you otherwise would not have learned had John not loaned them to me. We all wish you would stay here, John, but since you are determined to go on this adventure, at least some indirect good shall come out of it.
The author of John Melin’s commentary on the Psalms is James Mays, who is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Studies at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA. In his comments on Psalm 74, he says, “It was likely composed for services of mourning over the destroyed temple in Jerusalem during the exilic period.” But it was he who told us Asaph was a contemporary of David, and now he’s saying Psalm 74, a Psalm of Asaph, was written four hundred years later. So which is it?
Well, the same is true of many of the Psalms attributed to David himself. The scholars say some of them were written long after David had died, and David’s name was ascribed to these later Psalms. Maybe the same was true for the less famous Asaph. According to James Mays, somebody else wrote Psalm 74 in the 6th century BCE and attached Asaph’s name to it. Little-known biblical writers thought it better to say someone well known had written what they wrote, because they thought it gave more credence to their thoughts. They were not trying to make a name for themselves, anyway; they were trying to extol the name of God. In the end, God matters most, not any of us. That is a notion well worth remembering.
Anyhow, Dr. Mays’ supposition about Psalm 74 seems very plausible. “O God, why dost thou cast us off forever? Why does thy anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” The people of Israel felt totally abandoned when the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 587 BCE, taking many of the leading people back to Babylon in chains. That period of history is called the Babylonian Captivity. It is the first of the three greatest traumas of Jewish history, the others being the destruction of the Jewish kingdom by the Romans from 68-72 CE, and supremely the Holocaust under the Nazis from 1939-45. Because the Jews have always identified so strongly with God, they had an extremely hard time trying to understand how God could have allowed these catastrophes to befall them. Psalm 74 is an illustration of that.
Whoever wrote this Psalm, and whenever he wrote it, he expresses his utter dismay to God for what has happened. The temple was knocked down, all its sacred symbols were destroyed, and the enemies of God (presumably the Babylonians) ridiculed the Jews. “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile thy name forever?” (74:10)
In our own time, we too have encountered so-called enemies of God. They are the New Atheists, the virulent opposition to belief in God: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, and the like. They are imbued with evangelical zeal to discredit Christianity or Judaism or Islam. They are as “fundamentalist” in their beliefs as the fundamentalist followers of any religion. Why doesn’t God do something about them? Why doesn’t He smite them from on high, sending thunderbolts to strike them dead, or at least silent?
When people of biblical faith find themselves up against it, they often – and perhaps always – wonder why God does not visibly intervene. How can God be God if He allows terrible calamities to befall His people? Palestinian Muslims called the Israeli success in their 1948 War of Independence and the expulsion of many thousands of Palestinians the Nakba, the Catastrophe. Millions of Americans on September 11, 2001 felt abandoned by God, seeing the collapse of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon in smoking ruins. When tragedies thrust themselves into our personal lives, we individually may also ask why God doesn’t act as He should.
How is God supposed to act? Have you ever thought about that? If God is to be God, what should He do to establish His divine credentials beyond any contradiction? Should He always step in on behalf of “His” people, whoever His people might imagine themselves to be? And anyway, who determines what is proper divine activity --- God, or us?
When people consider themselves devotees of God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and something major goes wrong in their collective or individual existence, they expect God to fix it. He is not obligated to do it immediately, we would all reluctantly concede, but in order for our devotion to continue, He should get to it soon, thank you very much.
Asaph (or whoever) gave a blunt reminder to God about this: “Have regard for thy covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. Let not the downtrodden be put to shame; let the poor and needy praise thy name” (74:20-21). The implication is that if God doesn’t act quickly, Israel will stop believing in Him. And then, in case God was taking a siesta and didn’t hear these demands, Asaph lays it on the line: “Arise, O God, plead thy cause; remember how the impious scoff at thee all the day!” That was how the people of Judah felt at the time of the Babylonian Captivity. Obliterate the blighters, God!
This is how the American people felt in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. There were calls to bomb anyplace we thought Osama bin Laden might be hiding. Demands for war echoed throughout the land. Within two days of the 9/11 attack, by a huge majority Congress authorized the President to use every available means to seek and destroy our enemies, whoever they were, and we weren’t sure who they were. Incidentally, it is by that act of Congress from twelve years ago that the President is ordering drone strikes against many people who had nothing at all to do with 9/11.
Can God be God if He doesn’t always right wrongs? Can He be God if He allows evil to triumph? Ought He not to feel an obligation always to replace evil with righteousness?
Who should seek righteousness? Should it be God? Or should it be us? We urge God to plead His cause, but is not His cause our cause? Should God directly support His own purposes, or is it up to us to do that on His behalf? He created us; but what did He create us for, if not to plead His cause and do His will and complete His work?
There is no end to problems in the world. But we deceive ourselves if we imagine that it is God who will solve them. That is our job. We create these problems, and we need to seek their solutions. We are God’s deputies on earth, His agents, His divinely-appointed ombudsmen.
A couple of weeks ago in The New York Times Magazine there was a fascinating – and frightening – story about American Millennials, the generation of people sometimes called Generation X or Generation Y. They are, in other words, those who are now in their 20s, 30s, or early 40s. They are the ones who have been the most adversely affected by our sluggish economy. In 1991 Neil Howe wrote a book called Generations. That far back he said of young people, “They look at the house their parents live in and say, ‘I could work for 100 years and I couldn’t afford this place.’” How would you like to be part of a generation which has come to believe they probably will not do as well financially as their parents or grandparents?
The Times article said that the average net worth of someone between 29 and 37 has fallen 21% since 1983, while the average net worth of someone 56 to 64 has more than doubled during that period. In three or four decades, the millennials shall be retiring on less income than their parents had. And these are not nameless nobodies; these are our children and grandchildren. Many economists and other experts believe they shall almost certainly be consigned to lower incomes and savings than those of us from the older generations.
When I was in my 20s, there were radicals loudly exclaiming, “You can’t trust anyone over 30!” They were wrong for a generation or so, but were they ultimately wrong? Most laws are passed by geezer lawmakers, and geezer lawmakers favor geezers. As a society we are giving short shrift to everyone 45 and under. Should they expect God to fix that disparity, or should it be us, “we the people,” who fix it? Do we expect God to be a divine economist? Do we?
In the last issue of The National Parks Magazine, there was a wonderfully profound article by a biologist and naturalist named Edward L. McCord. He wrote, “We have learned from the fossil record that the original ancestors of all life on Earth arose as much as 3.8 billion years ago. Consequently, every plant and animal alive today is the forward point in a seamless continuum of life extending back through most of Earth’s history.”
Then Mr. McCord went on to say, “Why do we see hundreds of saplings growing beneath the burned forests of lodgepole pines but not on the floors of other burned forests? Because lodgepole pines have adapted to produce ‘serotinous’ cones that are sealed shut by resin, which melts to release the plant’s seeds only in the extreme temperatures brought about by forest fires.
“Why do we see brilliant orange striations in the water along edges of many thermal springs? Because certain microorganisms have adapted to live in these high-temperature acidic environments, and these colorful rings reflect their proximity and tolerance to the extreme conditions – the closer they are, the more they can withstand….
“Why has the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone led beavers to return to the park? Because beavers and elk compete for aspen and willows, and now that elk must constantly move to avoid those wolves, they cannot linger and browse on these tree species. That means beavers have greater access to aspen and willow branches for dams and bark for food, so their populations are making a comeback.”
Here’s what I deduce from that. We can observe that God is God in nature. That is, He created everything, and then He sat back to see how every species would adapt itself to its environment. Some did very well, others not so well, and others not at all. But there is one species that makes it very hard for letting God be God, and that is our species, Homo sapiens. We call ourselves “People of Wisdom,” but sometimes it doesn’t look like it. Sometimes we are too big for our britches; sometimes we act like Homo insipientia: People of Folly or People of Insanity. It happens when anyone intentionally or unintentionally destroys cities or temples or skyscrapers or five-sided buildings - - - or a viable future for their young.
Geoffrey Rowell is the Anglican bishop of Gibraltar in Europe. He wrote about the virtue of humility in a column in The Times of London. “In a world of assertiveness courses, and where job applications call for a self-aggrandizing parade of skills, the virtue of humility sits very uneasily. It is so sharply counter-cultural.” He goes on, “The wisdom of many faiths teaches humility as something we all need to learn if we would come to spiritual maturity, and is essential for human flourishing….Humility does not seek to dominate others. All of us know how destructive it is – literally humiliating – to be on the receiving end of powerful, dominant characters, whose self-seeking ambition tramples on and denies the humanity of their fellow men and women.”
When the world seems to have collapsed around us, our inclination may be to pray, “Arise, O God, plead Thy cause!” That is understandable. Nevertheless, God never pleads His own cause. Instead, He expects us to plead it on His behalf. If Homo sapiens have learned nothing else in our fifty-thousand-or-so years of existence, we should have learned that for the future of our species, we need for us to be the “us” God meant for us to be. When that happens, God will be the God He always meant Himself to be. God can’t fully be God to us unless we become the “us” God wants us to be. If we shall perceive God to be God, it is a necessity for us to be us.