Avoiding the Riff-Raff

Psalm 26
August 30, 2020
William G. Carter

Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity,

and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.

Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and mind.

For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.

I do not sit with the worthless, nor do I consort with hypocrites;

I hate the company of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked.

I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O Lord,

singing aloud a song of thanksgiving, and telling all your wondrous deeds.

O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides.

Do not sweep me away with sinners, nor my life with the bloodthirsty,

those in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes.

But as for me, I walk in my integrity; redeem me, and be gracious to me.

My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.

 

The Psalms are found in the middle of Bible. They reside in a wisdom section that instruct us in how to live. Situated between the pondering of Job and the one-liners of the Proverbs, they speak for the wise life, the righteous life, the holy life. A psalm is a script for the relationship between humans like us and our maker.

 

So it is no surprise that they are grounded in reality, not fantasy. Life is beautiful, and life is also ugly. There are rewards to hard work, and blessings in diligent effort. And sometimes hard work and effort are blown up by evil. God invites us to keep living in faithfulness, no matter what comes. God promises we will flourish, even if that doesn’t seem obvious right now.

 

·         As Brent Eelman reminded us last week with Psalm 2, there is noise and nonsense among all the nations of earth. Above them, God laughs, for every ruler of this age is temporary.

 

·         As Jim Thyren reminded us a few weeks ago with Psalm 17, there are wicked enemies surrounding us like lions. They are ready to pounce and do us some harm. Yet we are the “apple of God’s eye,” defended by a stronger Savior.

 

Psalm 26 stands among these well-rooted trees. The poet of this psalm has led a consistent life. He has done all he can to fly straight and live right. So he calls upon the Lord to show some consistency in return:

 

Vindicate me, Lord, I have done everything right.

I trust you. In response to your steadfast love, I walk in faithfulness to you.

So vindicate me. Exonerate me. Clear my name.

 

And then he says something more: I stay away from the worthless, the hypocrite, the evildoer, and the wicked.

 

That is well-seasoned advice. One of the ways we guard our loved ones is by warning them to avoid dangerous people. “Birds of a feather flock together.” “You are known by the company you keep.”

 

When I was a teenager, Saturday night would come, and my mother would ask, “Where are you going tonight? What are you doing? Who is going with you?” There were a few of my associates that she did not regard very highly. If I blurted out the wrong name, she said, “I’m not sure that is a good idea.”

 

Or my sister, almost my age, traveled in many of the same circles as I. She would discover that I had designs to date somebody who wasn’t on her approved list. “What? Why are you going out with her? Don’t you know about her reputation?” What I never said out loud is that the bad reputation was exactly why I was interested.

 

I’m joking, mostly, but affirm their judgment was in line with the morality material of the Bible. You have to be careful with whom you associate. To summarize from one of the Proverbs, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.” (Proverbs 13:20) Or as the apostle Paul warned with a wagging finger, “Bad company ruins good morals.” (1 Corinthians 15:33)

 

We know this to be true. One of the parlor games these days is to open the newspaper and ask, “Which politician will go to jail next?” The public trust unravels when those in authority take more than their share or demand what they have not earned. Every single day we hear about some flagrant neglect of the law, a blurring of right and wrong, a power grab rooted in arrogance. Should a journalist report the truth, they are accused by the guilty of manufacturing fake news. Then a big red, rubber ball is tossed to distract us to look somewhere else.

 

The Psalmist stands firmly within a moral tradition. There is a difference between the good and the bad, the pure and the sleazy, the noble and the reprobate, the virtuous and the greedy. “I have been careful of my associations,” says Psalm 26. “I do not hang out with the wrong people. I avoid the riff raff.” That’s good advice. Character matters.

 

It’s no wonder, then, there were serious concerns about Jesus. According to the record, he persisted in spending time with the wrong people. It didn’t look good. The religious leaders of his time wrinkled their brows and pursed their lips, as Jesus went into the homes of known sinners. He sat at their tables and broke bread with them. And for those who saw the world in dualistic terms – right or wrong, good or bad – this was disturbing.

 

On the one hand, there was no question that Jesus was good. He had the authority to heal the sick. His wisdom opened human hearts to God. He spoke truth and served those in need. He was a good man. Yet Jesus spent time with those whom the righteous dismissed as unclean and the religious dismissed as evil. They murmured among themselves, “You are known by the company you keep.”

 

In the brief story we heard today, Jesus calls a tax collector named Matthew to follow him and join his merry band. Right after that, Jesus hosts a dinner party that draws in the “tax collectors and sinners.” We have heard about the “tax collectors,” despised because they collaborated with Roman army which occupied the land. We can only guess who the “sinners” were.

 

Most likely these were people who lived in the shadows. Not easily traced. Enveloped in shame. Their business was suspicious. Their behavior was suspect. There was something shady about them. We had somebody like that on my street. Never seen outdoors, window shades always drawn, always had money but nobody knew the source. All the neighbors had their speculations.

 

Tax collectors and sinners: they flocked to Jesus. They gathered around him like flies to honey. Despised, excluded, Jews banned from entering their own Jewish temple. And here came Jesus, available, accessible, friendly, inclusive, welcoming, and always willing to eat a meal with the likes of them.  

 

Didn’t he know Psalm 26? I hate the company of evildoers. I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence. There is a tension here. We understand it quite clearly.

 

I took a professional interest in the recent account of Roger Stone. Remember him? Political operative, dirty trickster, long trail of suspicious activities. He was convicted in federal court of seven counts of witness tampering and lying to investigators. Now he says he found the Lord while he was in prison. I confess I swallowed pretty hard when I heard that one. Who does he think he is, the apostle Paul?

 

We will wait and see if the convert makes amends and lives the converted life. While we wait, we gain a clearer view of Jesus, as related to this psalm. As he defines his mission to the Pharisees and the other purebreds, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13)

 

In his complete goodness, Jesus does just that: he calls the sinners. He welcomes them to his side. He embodies mercy, which ultimately becomes his sacrifice. As we know, he pays dearly for it. He practices the love of God for all people, stepping over the dotted line between “righteous” and “sinner.” In no small part, that is what sends him to the cross. He suffers for doing the right thing, God’s right thing.

 

That open one more view into Psalm 26. The psalm begins with a cry for vindication. It is a prayer for God to exonerate a faithful life. Whoever prays this psalm has had a pack of trouble, not because of what they have done wrong, but precisely because they have tried to live right. This is a good man who is being attacked because he is a good man. He calls on God to reveal the truth about his life; that will be his vindication.

 

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once counseled, whenever we come across a psalm that sounds difficult, listen as if Jesus is praying it. This was his prayer book. Jesus knew the scriptures.

 

Those who condemned him might have thought the psalm applied to them. They took pride in their purity yet exposed themselves as hypocrites. That kind of hypocrisy is still going on. And as Pontius Pilate presided over the trial of Jesus, he washed his hand in innocence, as if he was not complicit in killing an innocent man. That kind of bloodthirstiness continues, whenever injustice is met with force and violence.

 

At the center of it all Jesus hangs on a cross. He has done nothing wrong and everything right. His goodness is condemned by those who can only be described as evildoers. They took great pride in separating themselves from those described as the riff-raff, and that has exposed them as something far worse.

 

Even so, the very deed of pushing Jesus onto a cross is the singular event that breaks down the wall between evil and holiness. The righteous and the powerful murder the Son of God, yet God does not retaliate or punish. God shows mercy, the same mercy Jesus has offered again and again and again. Forgiveness is announced. A new beginning is offered. Self-righteousness is demolished by the righteous love of God. Finally that’s what saves us all.

 

The word that shimmers in Psalm 26 is integrity. Integrity at the beginning, integrity at the end. The Hebrew dictionary says integrity is all about completeness. You are who you say you are. You do what you profess to do. There is clarity, not confusion.

 

The good news this morning comes not in this psalm but after it. Jesus has been exonerated. After the cross, his integrity has been affirmed. He is revealed in resurrection as the Innocent One, the Holy Redeemer who snatches us out of our darkness and brings us into God’s marvelous light. His invitation to us is to join him in praying the final words of Psalm 26.

 

As for me, I walk in my integrity; redeem me, and be gracious to me.

My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.

© William G. Carter. All rights reserved.