A Psalm for the World

Scripture: Psalm 73

Sermon: A Psalm for the World

Topics: anger, envy, reflection, wicked, Haiti, nevertheless

Preached: January 24, 2010

Rev. Mike Abma

Psalm 73

Truly God is good to the upright,

   to those who are pure in heart.

² But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;

   my steps had nearly slipped.

³ For I was envious of the arrogant;

   I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

⁴ For they have no pain;

   their bodies are sound and sleek.

⁵ They are not in trouble as others are;

   they are not plagued like other people.

⁶ Therefore pride is their necklace;

   violence covers them like a garment.

⁷ Their eyes swell out with fatness;

   their hearts overflow with follies.

⁸ They scoff and speak with malice;

   loftily they threaten oppression.

⁹ They set their mouths against heaven,

   and their tongues range over the earth.

¹⁰ Therefore the people turn and praise them,

   and find no fault in them.

¹¹ And they say, ‘How can God know?

   Is there knowledge in the Most High?’

¹² Such are the wicked;

   always at ease, they increase in riches.

¹³ All in vain I have kept my heart clean

   and washed my hands in innocence.

¹⁴ For all day long I have been plagued,

   and am punished every morning.

¹⁵ If I had said, ‘I will talk on in this way’,

   I would have been untrue to the circle of your children.

¹⁶ But when I thought how to understand this,

   it seemed to me a wearisome task,

¹⁷ until I went into the sanctuary of God;

   then I perceived their end.

¹⁸ Truly you set them in slippery places;

   you make them fall to ruin.

¹⁹ How they are destroyed in a moment,

   swept away utterly by terrors!

²⁰ They are like a dream when one awakes;

   on awaking you despise their phantoms.

²¹ When my soul was embittered,

   when I was pricked in heart,

²² I was stupid and ignorant;

   I was like a brute beast towards you.

²³ Nevertheless I am continually with you;

   you hold my right hand.

²⁴ You guide me with your counsel,

   and afterwards you will receive me with honour.

²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but you?

   And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,

   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

²⁷ Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;

   you put an end to those who are false to you.

²⁸ But for me it is good to be near God;

   I have made the Lord God my refuge,

   to tell of all your works.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

In the middle of January in Michigan, it is easy to be a little grumpy.

The weather is cold.

The sun rarely shines.

And it seems every bug or virus known to humankind is stalking you.

Lately, people’s grumpiness and anger has been directed at bankers.

The elder statesman of journalists, Daniel Schorr, recently reminisced about how FDR used to call bankers “Economic Royalists.”

Nowadays, we simply call them “Fat Cat Bankers.”

The other week the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission summoned 4 executives from the largest banks in the nation to answer some questions.

This Commission wanted to know

what caused the financial crisis in the fall of 2008,

and what role the banks played in causing and exacerbating the crisis.

What came up again and again in this inquiry is that people are angry.

They are angry at banks.

They are angry at bankers.

They are angry at the unscrupulous and greedy actions the banks took

with their devilishly complicated derivatives,

and their role in pumping up the mortgage bubble.

But what really has people angry is that the very ones who contributed to this crisis are not the ones really feeling the effects of the crisis.

The average pay at Goldman Sachs remains at $600,000 per year.

The Chief Executive of that bank made 68 million in 2007 and almost does not dare release what he made in 2009. As one journalist put it, their biggest challenge is trying to package their eye-popping salaries in some kind of mantel of moderation.

To much of the rest of the country,

who are trying to make ends meet,

who are trying to keep a job or find a new job,

who have seen their retirement savings evaporate,

it is understandable that there is this remarkable amount

of anger and envy and frustration with Wall Street

and the bankers who are the lords of Wall Street.

That anger shows up in some funny ways.

Some of you may know the arcade game Whack-a-mole.

Little moles pop up and you have to whack as many of them as you can in 30 seconds with a mallet.

Well, apparently, a number of arcade owners have replaced the mole figures with the figures of bald-headed bankers with suits and ties.

Instead of calling it Whack a Mole they are calling it Whack a Banker.

Apparently people are lining up to whack away.

Humor is another way to vent.

One of my favorite banker cartoons shows two bankers talking to each other.

The one banker says to the other:

“When I was a child I lost childish amounts of money,

but when I became a man I put away childish losses

and started losing man-sized amounts of money.”^[1]

The thing is, we either laugh or cry.

One journalist summarized it this way:

When a whole town burns down except for the bank,

and it was the bankers who started the fire in the first place,

and the town’s fire department spent all its time saving the bank,

is it any wonder that the citizens of the town are angry?

Beneath the anger, and the envy, and the biting humor,

there are the deeper questions.

These are the questions of Justice: Is this right? Is it fair?

These are the theological Questions: Lord, how do you let people get away with this?

PSALM 73

The writer of Psalm 73 knows these feelings of anger and envy and outrage.

But before we get too deeply into this psalm, let me start by pointing your attention to where the psalm is in the psalter. Psalm 73 begins Book 3 of the 5 Books within the Psalms. In other words, Psalm 73 begins the middle book of Psalms. But according to the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, this psalm isn’t only physically in the middle. It is also at the theological center of the Psalms. He writes that the psalms travel something of a road from petition to praise.

This psalm, psalm 73, acts like a hinge, like a central pivot point for the whole book of Psalms.

Here is why he writes this.

THE COMPLAINT 1-14

Where does Psalm 1 start?

Psalm 1 starts with a strong statement that God is good.

All those who follow God are like trees by the stream.

They will prosper in all they do.

But the wicked with whither and perish.

That is psalm 1.

Things are clear.

But after Psalm 1, things become less clear.

From Psalm 2 – 72, in psalm after psalm,

we hear cries like this:

“Lord, listen to my cry, give ear to my prayer.

How long must I suffer?” Psalm 4

“When I’m surrounded by trouble, why do you seem so far away” Psalm 10

“How long will you forget me, O Lord? How long will you hide your face from me?” Psalm 13

In psalm after psalm, things are not so clear. They are confused.

Those who follow God are suffering, not prospering.

And the wicked are prospering, not suffering.

Things are backwards, up-side-down,

And Psalm 37, which we already read part of in our liturgy,

is a psalm that is literally half-way to Psalm 73.

It is a psalm that acknowledges this tension.

Things are not the way they are supposed to be.

So let’s go back to Psalm 73.

Where does it start?

It starts with the theme of Psalm 1: God you are good…you are good to the upright and to the pure of heart.

But then the Psalmist gets very honest.

He confesses his anger and his envy.

He says,

Listen Lord, here is my struggle.

I look at how much the wicked prosper and I can’t take it.

I’m surrounded by trouble, but they seem to live a life of ease.

What follows is a pretty long list of complaints.

People who have grown wealthy at the expense of others.

These are people seemingly always at ease and always getting richer.

And then, in verse 13, there is this crushing verdict:

“All in vain I have kept my heart clean

and washed my hands in innocence.

For all day long I have been plagued,

and am punished every morning.”

Wow — what is the psalmist is saying?

What’s the point? It doesn’t pay.

I’ve tried to follow you, O Lord,

but my life is still the pits.”

Here is all the tension of the last 72 psalms all rolled up into this psalm.

There needs to be a pause after verse 14.

There needs to be a pause simply to ask,

“Is this what I am left with?

Is anger, and envy, and emptiness all I am left with?

Is pushing God away and not trusting his promises

and not believing in his steadfast love,

is that really where I want to be?”

RECONSIDERATION and REFELCTION 15-28

Verse 15 acknowledges the impasse:

If I keep talking like this, I’m being unfaithful to you O Lord,

And yet, how can I make sense of all the senseless stuff that goes on in the world?

It seemed to me a wearisome task (verse 16).

Verses 17 – 26 are the three things this psalmist is left with.

Three conclusions that aren’t always clear or easy but necessary.

First: the wicked are on slippery ground.

Their ease is not so easy.

Their wealth is no so valuable.

Their happiness is not so joyful.

Second: being bitter about it all,

How unfair life is,

How apparently unjust God is to allow this,

Well, that isn’t right either.

That is acting like a brute beast —

Like a bull that sees red.

And then in verse 23-26 the psalmist reaches a final conclusion —

Words which I think are some of the most powerful in the whole book of psalms.

Even though nothing has changed,

Even though there are no clear answers,

Even though the wicked are still seemingly problem-free,

And the faithful are struggling fiercely,

Nevertheless,

(And I love that word Nevertheless in verse 23 )

Nevertheless,

I am continually with you

And you are with me –

When I’m torn two ways

You hold the stronger of my hands,

You hold my right hand.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth I desire other than you.

And then verse 26:

My flesh and my heart may fail

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Is there a more lovely verse in all of the psalms?

In spite of all appearances,

In spite of all our troubles,

In spite of all the apparent injustice in the world,

Nevertheless

My flesh and my heart may fail

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

And the psalm ends where it begins —

God is good,

And it is good,

It is good to be near God.

CONCLUSION

We started out talking about bankers,

About being angry at them,

and envious of them,

angry at their unscrupulous actions

envious of their apparent life of ease.

But the thing about anger and envy is that it almost always looks up.

It almost always looks to those we think have it better than we do.

Just think for a moment how Christians in the country of Haiti might read and hear Psalm 73?

Here is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Here is a country ravished by 4 different hurricanes in 2008.

Here is a country that has never had a truly functional government.

And now this happens.

An earthquake of tragic proportions.

The tragedy isn’t only in the earthquake.

It is also in the poverty.

As David Brooks pointed out in the New York Times recently,

The Bay area of California had a 7.0 earthquake in 1989 and 63 people died.

Now Haiti has a 7.0 earthquake and 50,000 die.

Why the difference?

The difference is poorly built homes, a poorly run country, a poorly developed infrastructure – the common word here is poor.

The poverty of this country is what has exacerbated this tragedy.

So how would Haitians read Psalm 73?

Who would they see as the rich,

as those living in ease,

as those who helped cause so much global poverty

but who are not really feeling its full effects?

Isn’t it true that the Christians of Haiti would read Psalm 73

then look at us, the wealthy of the United States,

with a certain amount of anger and envy,

as they struggle mightily with why this has happened to them?

But Psalm 73 helps us all …all turn a corner:

from anger to assurance,

from frustration to faith

from confusion to praise.

Laura Blank, a relief coordinator for World Vision, was one of the first people on the scene in Haiti. The total devastation took her breath away. It was horrible.

But then, when darkness came, she heard singing.

She heard a refrain that was being sung over and over again.

Not knowing the Creole language, she asked, “What are they singing?”

And they said,

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

With whatever anger, or envy, or frustration you are dealing with,

may Psalm 73 help you turn that corner,

from questions to commitment,

from anger to assurance

from heart-felt petition to praise,

that though my flesh and my heart may fail

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

1. In Christian Century, Dec. 29, 2009. ↑