Powers
that Were?
Psalm
82[1]
It doesn’t take a
person too long to recognize that in this world of ours there are certain facts
of life it would seem we have to accept. Those who have the most power
generally get their way, even at the expense of others; sometimes at the
expense of the vast majority. Those who are wealthy have plenty of ways at
their disposal to make sure they hold onto their wealth and even add as much to
it as possible. Again, even if it means running roughshod over anyone who gets
in their way. The “movers and shakers” use their power and their money in ways
that typically take care of themselves and others like them, and they look down
their noses at the rest of us. We call them “the powers that be.”
For many people
in the history of the world these powers have been personified as deities. In
fact, they believed that the power to determine our fate was held by a pantheon
of gods who ruled over every aspect of human life, from weather, to fortune, to
food, to love, to success, to even life and death itself.[2]
Even to this day many millions of people believe that there are multiple
deities who control their lives and our destinies. While this way of looking at
things is understandable, the sad thing is that those “gods” usually wouldn’t
make very decent people, let alone deities! For most people throughout history,
life was at the mercy of “powers” that could be capricious and thoughtless at
best, and at worst cruel and ruthless.
It’s interesting
that sometimes that worldview works its way even into our faith, even into our
scriptures. Our lesson from the Psalms for today is a case in point. It
represents an ancient belief system that was more characteristic of the
Canaanites than it was of the faith of the Hebrew people. The psalmist speaks of
a gathering of the gods, coming together under a chief god to make decisions
about human life. When this concept shows up in the Hebrew Bible, it presents
this council as one presided over by Yahweh, the Most High God who rules over
lesser deities.[3] That
seems to be the context in our Psalm text. In the New Testament, it shows up as
a belief in spiritual entities, “principalities and powers,” as St. Paul
describes them.
The interesting
note about this in Psalm 82 is that the Most High God, Yahweh, has called this
council essentially to give the other gods their walking papers! Apparently,
the purpose of the council of the gods was to see to it that the will of the
Most High God would be done in the affairs of humankind. That means that they
were to have given “justice to the weak and the orphan”; they were to have
maintained “the right of the lowly and the destitute”; they were to have
“rescued the weak and the needy;” they were to have “delivered them from the
hand of the wicked” (Ps. 82:3-4).[4]
Unfortunately,
they had failed to do that. Instead they had shown “partiality to the wicked”
(Ps. 82:2). What we have to understand is that in the Hebrew Bible, the wicked
aren’t those living on the margins of society, whom “decent” people have always
seen as a threat. In fact, they were the “movers and the shakers.” They were
wicked because they used their power and their wealth to enrich themselves and
to enhance the quality of their lives. And they did it without any thought to
whom they hurt or oppressed or took advantage of or even destroyed in the
process. The “gods” had failed to do God’s will because they allowed “the
powers that be” to have the freedom to do as they pleased.[5]
For that reason,
in our Psalm for today, God essentially fires the “gods.” This all may seem
very foreign to us, but it would seem the Psalm uses a concept that was
widespread in that day to take apart the very idea of the existence of “powers”
other than God.[6] The text
undercuts the idea that there could be any entities—gods or otherwise—who can
actually thwart God’s will. Despite the fact that we humans tend to want
“someone” to blame for the evil in this world, the Psalms reflect the heart of
the Hebrew faith that there is no being—spiritual or otherwise—who is powerful
enough to effectively stand over against God as a rival.[7]
In the Psalms, as
elsewhere in the Bible, it is God’s reign that is the reality that is
ultimately true in this world, even though it may not always seem that way. And
that means is that any so-called “powers that be” have no power at all in
comparison with God. The Psalms express the faith that God effectively puts out
of business any “powers” that try to subvert his purpose for the human family:
that the weak and the lowly and the needy of this world will be raised up to
the life God intends. As the Bible puts it, “God opposes the proud, but gives
grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5).
We tend to think
of the “powers that be” as the movers and shakers in our day. They are the ones
who can throw their weight around and do just as they please with no regard for
consequences. But the Scripture reminds us that despite appearances now, these
so-called “powers that be” have no ultimate power in the face of God’s will
that justice and fairness shall prevail; that love and mercy and compassion
shall be the final destiny for the human family.[8]
The “powers” may be able to make life difficult now. But one day, they will be
shown for what they truly are: has-beens. One day, the “powers that be” will
become at best powers that were.[9]
[1] ©2016
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/10/2016 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. An audio version is available at http://www.hickmanpresbyterian.org/.
[2] Cf.
Keith Ward, God: A
Guide for the Perplexed, 4-7, where he summarizes this worldview as one
that attributes the “creative energies” in human society as coming (p. 4) “from
an inspiring power, creative, expressive, truly supernatural since it is beyond
the natural powers of most humans.”
[3] J.
Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New
Interpreters Bible IV:1006: “Psalm 82 portrays the death of all other gods.
In so doing, it offers a clear picture of the ancient Near Eastern polytheistic
culture that formed Israel’s religious background. In Canaanite religion, the
high god El convened the council of the gods (see this concept also in 1 Kgs
22:19-23; Job 1:6-12; and perhaps Ps 58:1-2). In v. 1, Israel’s God has
displaced El and convenes what proves to be an extraordinary meeting. Israel’s
God proceeds to put the gods on trial.” Cf. also H.-J. Krauss, Psalms 60-150, 155, where he insists
that “The older interpretation, that the Elohim are human judges or princes (F.
Delitzsch), has been proved to be out of the question by religion-historical
research, especially by texts discovered in Ras Shamra. The Syrian-Canaanite
mythology thinks of the heavenly world as populated by innumerable ‘divine
essences.’”
[4] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB IV:
1006: “For the God of Israel, the criterion of justice involves what is done
for the weak, the orphaned, the destitute, the needy (see Pss 9:7-9, 18;
10:17-18; 68:5-6; 113:7; 146:7-9). Not surprisingly, justice and righteousness
also appear as parallels in the psalms that proclaim God’s reign or describe
the reign of God’s earthly agent, the king (see Pss 72:1-2; 97:2; 99:4; see
also 96:10, 13; 98:9). Here again, the establishment of justice and
righteousness is the measure of divinity and of human life as God intends it.”
[5] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness,
Arise!: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, 121: “If the gods are as
‘blind’ as chance, if they have ‘neither insight nor understanding’, then they
will bring the whole structure of the world to destruction; then nothing is
certain any more; then you can no longer rely on anything. Everything threatens
to sink into chaos.” By contrast (ibid.,
126), “When YHWH rises up in his whole greatness as creator of the heavens and
the earth, ‘he will judge the poor with righteousness and decide with equity
for the wretched’ (Isa. 11:4). ‘Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and
righteousness abide in the fruitful field’ (Isa. 32:16). Then the whims of
chance will disappear, and fate will no longer be blind, for righteousness and
justice will put everything to rights: gods and human beings, heaven and earth.”
[6] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB
IV:1006: “In short, the council of the gods is permanently adjourned, and so
Psalm 82 affirms again the message that forms the theological heart of the book
of Psalms: God rules the world.” Cf. also James L. Mays, Psalms, 269-70: “This portrayal of the assembly of the gods is
unlike any other because it announces the permanent adjournment of the assembly
and the execution of its constituency: the psalm announces the death of the
gods. It is a way of saying in the face of a polytheistic worldview, ‘I believe
in God the Father Almighty.’”
[7] Cf.
Artur Weiser, The Psalms, 557, where he says that the idea of a council of gods
“serves to explain the riddle presented by life that violence so often triumphs
over what is right, and that the weak and the poor do not come into their own
and are exposed to oppression by ungodly rulers.” He adds (ibid., 558),
however, that “this attempt contains in embryo the dualistic solution of the
problem, a solution which, after all, is only an attempt to solve the problem,
but is not in itself a proper solution.
For the existence of evil is here attributed to the activities of forces
hostile to God; but at the same time God’s righteousness as such remains
untouched by the injustice that exists in the world. … Wherever the reality of
evil in the world is felt as a power menacing man’s existence, it is considered
to be the result of the activities of a personal power. Both the notion of
Satan, which, springing from other sources, penetrated the Old Testament, and
the figure of the Devil in the Christian faith are but different figures of
speech, expressing the same state of affairs, in which evil is taken quite
seriously as the activity of a real personal being. However, the psalmist holds
the view that the attempt at a dualistic solution of the problem of theodicy is
not the final word in the quest for God’s righteousness. In principle the faith
in the One God and in his righteousness remains unshaken here. With a prophetic
assurance the psalmist recognizes that the real and final solution of the
problem is to be found in the ultimate vindication of the righteousness of God.”
[8] Cf.
McCann, “Book of Psalms,” NIB IV:
1007: “Psalm 82 raises the question of how we are to hear such an overtly
mythological text in our very different world. The first step is to approach
the psalm as a poetic expression of faith rather than a literal description of
a trial in heaven. The truth of the psalm’s message lies in its ability to
illumine reality, which it does in a remarkable way—so much so that in our day,
and with our distance from the ancient Near Eastern worldview, it is possible
for us to appreciate the psalmist’s conviction that injustice destroys the
world. Indeed, we see it happening all around us—in our cities and
neighborhoods, in our schools and churches and homes.”
[9] Cf.
Mays, Psalms, 270-71: “It becomes an
axiom of Old Testament theology that the worship of the LORD must and shall
bring justice to the weak. On the other hand, the forces and powers that
control a society in which rights of the needy are violated and neglected are
unmasked as failed gods.”
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