Bending
Towards Justice
Psalm
52[1]
It’s not too hard
to notice that the values and the principles taught in the Bible contradict
those of our society.[2]
That is, if we take the Bible seriously. The Bible’s values are determined by
the confidence that God’s reign is the reality that is ultimately true in this
world. The Bible looks forward to the day when God’s will is done on earth as
it is in heaven: when justice and fairness prevail; when love and mercy and
compassion define the human family. It is an outlook on life and on our world
that will not let us stay comfortable with the “values” of our society. The
Bible teaches us to hope that the affairs of this world are “bending toward
justice.”
It’s also not too
hard to discover what our true values are. In our world, winning isn’t just a
good thing, or even an important thing, it’s the only thing that matters. We
value winning and really don’t care what it takes to get there. In our world,
money makes the world go around, and those who have the most money can spin
just about anything to suit their every whim. In our world, might makes right,
whether we’re talking about physical strength or other kinds of power. If we
can do or say something and get away with it, we will, with little or no
thought to whether it’s actually right. In our world, the only thought we give
to justice is whether or not those we deem to be criminals get punished
adequately.
We saw last week
that the Psalmist attributed this state of affairs to the spiritual “powers
that be.” And God essentially fires them for not seeing to it that his justice
was done on earth as it is in heaven. But as we touched on last week, the Bible
also addresses those who abuse their position and their power to get whatever
they want, regardless of the consequences.[3]
Not only the Psalms, but also the prophets rebuked the “high and mighty” for
taking advantage of their power to take advantage of other people. They spared
no one in the process— the wealthy, the powerful, even prophets, priests, and
kings. Anyone who abused their power to benefit themselves was exposed by the
truth they spoke.[4]
Our Psalm lesson
for today unmasks the blatant evil in what those who are the “high and mighty”
can get away with. The psalmist doesn’t spare anyone’s feelings in his rebuke:
“you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of
treachery. You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the
truth” (Ps. 52:2-3). It’s not a pretty picture. He cuts through all the fanfare
and the acclaim that can surround those who climb the ladder of success by
stepping on anyone who gets in their way. And the essential message is that
anyone who presumes to take this path in life will eventually find it to be
their undoing.
One of the
interesting features of this Psalm is that the “title,” which was very likely
added later, seeks to identify a specific individual who was guilty of this
kind of arrogance.[5] The
psalmist finds such a villain in a story that took place when King Saul was
pursuing David in the wilderness of Judea. It mentions someone most of us
probably never heard of: Doeg the Edomite. What we have to understand is that
in the days of ancient Israel, the quintessential villain probably would have
been Doeg the Edomite. Doeg was the man
who informed Saul that David consulted with and received help from a priest
named Ahimelech. But worse than that,
when Saul’s own troops refused to kill Ahimelech because he was a priest of God
Most High, Doeg not only killed him, but also all the others who were with
him—in all 85 priests!
Part of the
problem with this story in the Hebrew Bible is that we never learn what happens
to him.[6] There’s no resolution to the tension that’s left when Doeg the Edomite
seemingly gets away with a vicious crime scot free. That’s why the title of Psalm 52 designates
it as a response to his treachery. But
in fact the Psalm addresses the problem of anyone who abuses their power and
wealth to get what they want—no matter what it takes. Psalm 52 promises those who “boast of
mischief,” who practice this kind of blatant injustice, that “what goes around
comes around.”
What this Psalm
reinforces is the conviction that anyone like Doeg the Edomite will not get
away with such blatant injustice without facing the consequences. Even the worst of the “high and mighty” who
apparently think themselves above the law and above God’s justice will one day
learn the lesson that “you reap whatever you sow” (Gal. 6:7).[7] It’s a truth that Martin Luther King, Jr. was
fond of stating: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward
justice.”[8]
Those who seem to get away with all kinds of evil now
will ultimately confront God’s judgment of their dirty work.
But the gospel of
our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ goes beyond the justice of retribution
that says, “an eye for an eye.” The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus, the one
in whom all the fullness of God dwells, the Lord of all the powers, does not
resolve the problem of injustice by “breaking down forever” the villains of
this world. Jesus resolves the problem
of injustice by reconciling all things to God. Jesus undoes the evil of those
who arrogantly presume to abuse their power by “making peace” through his death
on the cross. Essentially, he brings us all back to God and realigns our hearts
to God’s ways And as the effects of that peace continue to work in the lives of
people like you and me, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of this world “bending
toward justice” after all.
[1] ©2016
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/17/2016 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. J.
Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New
Interpreters Bible IV: 891: where he says that the depiction of the “mighty
one” in Psalm 52 depicts “precisely what much of contemporary society
consistently presses us to do—to ground our lives in nothing but ourselves and
our possessions.” Cf. also Artur Weiser, The Psalms, 413: “Without trust in God man falls prey to the power of evil; he cannot help trusting in something and, if it is not God whom he trusts, then it is his own self or his wealth which he makes his idol, and even his malice appears to him to be a sign of strength of which he can boast.”
[3] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB IV:
890: “The mighty one is willing to use any means to get ahead, regardless of
how destructive. In short, the mighty one represents the essence of wickedness
in the Psalms: autonomy, self-rule.”
[4] Cf. James
L. Mays, Psalms, 205: “The psalm was
composed for a time when power joined to wealth was destructive of the social
order and a tribulation and scandal for those who loved good and trusted in
God. Its basic theme is the conflict between the wicked and the righteous in a
world governed by God. … The basic confidence is that God will overrule the way
of the wicked.” Cf. similarly H.-J. Krauss, Psalms
1-59, 511-512.
[5] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB IV:
890: “The superscription identifies this “mighty one” as Doeg, one of Saul’s
servants, who informed Saul of David’s locale and killed the priests of Nob at
Saul’s command (see 1 Samuel 21–22; 22:9 is quoted in the superscription).
While Psalm 52 makes sense as the words of David in such a situation, it is much
more likely that the superscription should be taken illustratively rather than
historically.”
[6] Cf. F. Hossfeld & E. Zenger, Psalms 2: A commentary on Psalms 51-100, 30: “The Samuel narratives leave Doeg’s fate
open, whereas the psalm announces his punishment.”
[7] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB IV:891:
“In contrast to the affirmation that God ‘will uproot’ the wicked, …the
psalmist knows the nature of true security: Life ultimately depends on God
rather than on ourselves or our possessions (see Luke 12:13-21, esp. v. 15).”
Cf. also ibid., “The punishment of
the wicked is that by pursuing wealth they have cut themselves off from God,
who is the source of life. Conversely, the reward of the righteous is that they
are grounded in God and thus connected to life’s source and destiny.”
[8] Cf.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” a speech to the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, 16 August 1967. Accessed at http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry
/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_the_11th_annual_sclc_convention/ .
Dr. King very likely was paraphrasing from a statement made by Theodore Parker,
a controversial 19th Century Unitarian minister and prominent
abolitionist, in a sermon entitled “Of Justice and the Conscience,” published
in Ten Sermons of Religion, 1853,
84-85: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long
one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete
the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from
what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” Accessed at https://ia800504.us.archive.org/21/items
/tensermonsofreli00inpark/tensermonsofreli00inpark_bw.pdf.
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