August 16, 2020
Here is a question for you. Question: What do NCIS, Blue
Bloods, mystery novels, and the book of Psalms have in common? Answer: Each one
is devoted to the pursuit of justice.
Justice is a recurring human issue. There is trouble in the world, and we want it corrected. There is violence in the neighborhood, and we want it to stop. There are some who afflicted and oppressed by those who profit from the affliction and oppression. And so, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Frank Reagan, Agatha Christie, and the Psalmist take their stand for what is right.
Now, admittedly, Psalm 9 rambles a bit and for good reason. Each verse begins with another letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It has been created as an acrostic meditation along with Psalm 10, which follows it. Yet the psalm holds together with a single gravitational theme. The world is a mess because the wicked have made it so. They have twisted public operations in their own favor. They have propped themselves up while putting others down. They have plundered the public good and lined their own pockets. They have maintained their position through force and violence. God won’t stand for it.
This kind of injustice is the recurring plot of popular TV shows, movies, books, and far too much of our public life. Every day it spreads across the headlines. Injustice is so pervasive that we begin to believe, “that’s just the way it is.” And if doesn’t touch us directly, if we aren’t the victims who suffer, we are tempted to keep our heads down and convince ourselves it’s not as bad as it is.
But the psalms consistently remind us: God won’t stand apart from a broken world. Psalm 9 declares God sits upon the throne forever, and from that throne, God judges the world with righteousness and equity.
Let’s wrap our brains around this for a bit. In the Bible, there is a throne, a single throne. There is only one Judge. All the smaller thrones and the lesser judges are called upon to exert the fairness of God. That’s why it is a scandal of biblical proportions for a judge to take a bribe or a public official to plunder the common good. And this is why one of the Ten Commandments is aimed toward anybody who distorts the truth and bears false witness.
God has set up the world so that everybody and everything can flourish. God’s table is level. All have equal access to it. The problem comes when someone wants to flourish at the expense of somebody else. They want more of the pie, even if that means others go hungry. The oppressor divides and excludes in order to gain more, and then established some ways to maintain the grab.
A number of folks in our congregation have been learning about good old American racism. The first slaves were imported in 1619 as a way of getting cheap labor and larger profits. Line your pockets at the expense of those who pick your cotton. When slavery was outlawed by Congress in the 1860’s, it simply bubbled up in other forms, by taking away the vote, segregating the schools, red-lining the suburbs, establishing stupid laws, and enacting every kind of brutality.
Just in the last week, I have learned there was a time not so long ago when real estate agents assured newcomers that no homes in Clarks Summit would ever be sold to African Americans. I don’t know if that’s true. At least it wasn’t officially true, or legally right, if ever openly stated. Yet let me remind us if there are communities that have so-called “bad neighborhoods,” we can be fairly certain they were created by exclusion, deprivation, and greed. And God won’t stand for any of this.
God sits on the throne. God established that throne for justice. In the words of our psalm, “The needy shall not be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever.” (9:18)
A great deal of our Jewish and Christian scripture repeats
this. If we haven’t noticed, we haven’t been paying attention. Or we have
softened it up, as a way of avoiding the harsher truths about the human animal.
One of the other psalms, Psalm 98, is the basis of a favorite Christmas carol. Let’s see if you remember it: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.” Ah, we love that one. We are required to sing it on Christmas Eve.
“And heaven and nature sing.” What are they singing about? Well, keep reading to the last verse of Psalm 98: “The Lord is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity.” Or as the Christmas carol puts, not in the future tense but the present tense, “He rules the world with truth and grace, and make the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”
God’s justice always expresses the glories of God’s righteousness and the wonders of God’s love. It holds them together. What is righteousness but the love of neighbor, the fair treatment of neighbor, in the name of the love of God which is love for all of us? Righteousness is always expressed in love. Not gushy love, but active love, muscular love, that works for the benefit of all.
Now, this can be hard to keep untangled, if only because our own emotions get in the way. When we hear about justice, or regard God as the Judge, one of the first things that pops up in our mind is punishment. Television justice is often reduced to putting the bad guys in jail. Or shooting them. Or something worse.
I was in the supermarket checkout line this week, considering a pack of gum. Suddenly a headline jumped off the page: “Grim justice for murdered wife and unborn son.” It’s not every day that I find a sermon illustration on the cover of the National Enquirer. It’s been even longer since I’ve bought a copy, but that headline, and this sermon, prompted me to skip the chewing gum, toss the tabloid in the grocery bag with the apples, and take it home to read.
The story told of Scott Peterson, jailed for taking his pregnant wife’s life almost twenty years ago in California. These days he is in San Quentin, apparently dying of Covid-19. This is the “grim justice” of the headline. Peterson did something terrible and now he is receiving his just punishment. And then I read the rest of the story on page 15.
Turns out, there is no confirmation that Mr. Peterson actually has Covid-19, although a number of fellow inmates have tested positive. Another thing the author of this unsigned article points out is Mr. Peterson has filed an appeal on the 2002 case, claiming that he didn’t received a fair trial. The California Supreme Court will rule on that soon.
And then there was the last line of the article, sufficiently inflammatory that it would probably never appear in the Washington Post or the Scranton Times-Tribune: “Sources in (his wife’s) camp maintain he is guilty and said they feel justice will only truly be served when Peterson rots in hell.”[1] Apparently they have harbored a grudge for a very long time. It wasn’t enough to simply send him to jail. They themselves are emotionally locked in another kind of prison.
The problem with exterminating all the evildoers is that none of us would be left. What does the Bible say? “All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way” (Isaiah 53:6). That is how one of the prophets describes our shared human condition. In every courtroom there are those who are condemned and there are those relieved that they haven’t yet been caught. Sometimes the human justice system gets it right, and sometimes there are more cases than can ever be processed.
It’s complicated by the fact that human judgment can be just as tainted by self-interest as anything else. Maybe that’s why Jesus looks at his followers and says, “Don’t judge” (Matthew 7:1). He is not merely wagging his finger at all the self-righteous Christians who think they are better than everyone else. (For what it’s worth, Psalm 26 will address them in the sermon in two weeks.) Oh, more than judging the judgmental, Jesus tells the truth that none of us can see all things clearly. As he goes on to say, we see the speck in the neighbor’s eye and do not notice the log in our own eye. (Matthew 7:3)
This is why we need God as the judge, the ultimate judge. God sees all things clearly. No matter how tangled, no matter how twisted, God perceives our lives with absolute truth. In the language of Psalm 9, there are some who are afflicted and others who are oppressors. There are the needy and the greedy. The truth is that many of us stand somewhere in between, perhaps tainted, perhaps victimized. And God see it all – God sees through it all.
I must believe in a God like this even if I cannot see it yet. I have to believe there is an order to the universe even when I am surrounded by chaos. I must trust in an ultimate clarity and truth especially when I am confronted by my own self-deception.
How can it be otherwise? God's character is perfect goodness. God has no tolerance for anything less than goodness. What saves our life from extermination are two other divine qualities: (1) God’s long-suffering patience, which is an expression of love for us; and (2) God’s determination to make all things right, even if it takes a while. As someone has said, God is “committed to a rule of just law, as one who can be counted on to intervene on behalf of those who are treated unjustly or against what is regarded as inequitable treatment.”[2]
So this is Psalm 9. The psalm declares God will make everything right, that God is working even now to accomplish this righteousness. Given who we are or who we are prone to be, the psalm is God’s invitation for you and me to stand on the right side of history, to defend the weak and redress the exploited. It is hard work, long term work, costly work; but it is holy work.
In the justice of God our judge, poor folk won’t always be forgotten. For God is love - holy, righteous love. And God always has the last word.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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