August 30, 2026
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
William G. Carter
We have spent enough weeks in the Psalms that
it was inevitable we would discover where they are. In the classroom, we invite
folks to find the Psalms in the center of the Bible. “Open up the book in the
middle, and there they are.” Right in the middle. The Psalms are prayers for
the faithful community. In every generation, they have been re-set to music. Even
though many of them speak in the first person – “The Lord is my shepherd.” “I
will bless the Lord.” - When they are put into the air, they speak for the
community. They become our texts.
And where are the psalms? In the center of things. In the middle of real life. In the complications of human situations. So, we have the psalm for today.
It resonates with many of the other texts in Israel’s prayerbook, for it distinguishes between right and wrong. It names the distance between good and evil. It spells out the behaviors. This is one of the ways Israel taught morality. There are stories of life going askew. A lot of them! And there are these poem songs – the Psalms – which summarize and clarify the stories.
This is one of those psalms. Life can go this way, or it can go that way. “I can worship God in the Temple; I can lose myself in the songs of thanksgiving” Or “I can thirst for blood and take a bribe.” There is no middle ground in between.
It’s clear from the very first psalm, which offers an overture of the whole book: “Happy are those who do not take the advice of the wicked, but delight in the law of the Lord.” Good people are planted like trees in the riverbank. They flourish. Their lives are fruitful. As for the evil? Well, they have no roots. When the wind blows, the wicked are blown away.
Hear the similarity between Psalm 1 and Psalm 26? You are good or you are evil. You are righteous or you are wicked. No sliding scale – this or that.
It might have been Walter Brueggemann who pointed out that people tend to talk this way when they are certain they are in the majority, when there is a wide consensus about right and wrong. So, there is agreement about “those people.” The finger pointing is clear.
And the distinctions don’t always hold, do they? We had a kid in our third-grade class. His name was Little Ricky. Red-headed, big freckles, had a cowlick that defied gravity. When he grinned, you knew two things: one day he would need braces, and he was scheming about something. He filled the toilet bowl with paper towels and pulled the handle. When the teacher yelled and wildly waved her hands, he stood behind her and mimicked her actions. He was that kid.
One day, she kept him at his desk while taking the rest of us to the playground. When she brought us back in, he had stolen all the erasers from the blackboard. The chalk, too. In complete exasperation, our teacher said, “Ricky, you’re never going to turn out well.” Years later, we saw his picture in the newspaper: CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He must have gotten his teeth fixed, yet there was no evidence he had straightened out his soul. In the words of another psalm, Psalm 73: “Why do the wicked prosper?”
Or another memory, which could have only happened in Lackawanna County. Right after I arrived in town, one of our congressmen was arrested on federal charges: conspiracy, racketeering, accepting illegal bribes.[1] The grand jury said it was an open and shut case. In response to the allegations, the city of Scranton threw a parade on Lackawanna Avenue to show their support. That night, Channel 16 interviewed an exuberant paradegoer, who said on camera, “He may be a crook, but he’s our crook.” I remember thinking, “Where did I move?”
You know the stories are all around us. Every day, somewhere, another story comes to light. We are flooded by them. They dull our spirit. So, to counter this dullness, the Psalmist speaks up with moral clarity. “This or that.”
“I do not sit with the worthless…” The Hebrew word for “worthless” is the same word we translate as “vain,” as in “Don’t speak the Lord’s name in vain.” The commandment has nothing to do with cursing. It has to do with using God’s name for “empty purposes.” Like calling on the name of Jesus so you can do things Jesus would never approve of.
“I do not consort with hypocrites…” I knew a church elder who called an absent member to say, “We miss you.” The absentee said, “I stopped going because of all the hypocrites in the pews.” Lois said, “There’s always room for one more.” True enough; but the word here is not the “play acting hypocrites“ that Jesus criticized. These people are hiding and scheming. They refuse to step into the light and be accountable.
And then, “I hate the company of evildoers and will not sit with the wicked.” Oops – here is the thing: they are sitting in the same place the psalmist is. They are part of the same company, the same congregation. Can you believe it? That there might be sinners in the sanctuary of God?
You know, I thought this was getting clearer but it’s not. The poet of Psalm 26 says he washes his hands in innocence and dances around God’s altar. He sings the hymns and tells the holy stories. And yet there are cracks in his perception of perfection. He professes his trust in God. He distinguishes himself from those who are corrupt and violent. In the same breath, he adds, “Vindicate me, O Lord. Test me, prove me, redeem me, be gracious to me.” Could it be that he’s not as innocent as he says?
In the commentaries, one of the scholars says this poet sounds a bit self-righteous, as if he’s saying, “What a good boy am I!” (Limburg, p. 84) He stands on one foot to defend himself, to boast of how he’s always going to worship. “You and me are good buddies, Lord. You know who I am and what I am.”
But then he says, “Please cut me a break.”
As Eugene Peterson translates verses nine, ten, and eleven, “Lord, when it’s time for spring cleaning, don’t sweep me out with the quacks and crooks, men with bags of dirty tricks, women with purses stuffed with bribe money. You know I’ve been aboveboard with you, now be aboveboard with me.”[2] He says it because he knows God is the only one who sees every soul with absolute clarity.
So, twice in the psalm, we have the word “integrity.” For us, integrity usually means sticking to our principles, standing up for our values. But here, integrity is re-aligning ourselves with the purposes of God. Integrity is ‘fessing up where we fall short and need forgiveness and then doing what we can to improve. Integrity is practical righteousness, in the deepest sense that God is the One who declares us righteous. Integrity is not a matter of defending ourselves, because that would make it all about us.
Instead, in the words of the Psalm, integrity is “loving the house” where God dwells. We live with God, continually instructed by God’s values, waking each day to realign ourselves with the Holy One and his ways.
All of us know some people get it, some people don’t. Most of us are on a long journey somewhere in between. I just think of two examples.
One is a man who is running for national office in another state. He’s been in trouble with the law over and over again. He has been credibly accused of real estate scams, taking bribes, making back room deals to benefit himself. His wife wants a divorce, and he’s stalling until after the election. In a most surreal revelation, he was caught on camera of stealing a $1000 ink pen and not giving it back. His opponent’s latest ad says with a smile, “Vote for our guy. He won’t steal your pen.” His own political party defends him by saying, “He is the best candidate we can find.” They may be right.
Yet in a world of moral compromise, this week we honor another kind of person. She grew up in poverty in east Tennessee, one of twelve children. Her father could not read or write. The family struggled but spent a lot of time in church where her grandfather was the preacher. Against all odds, she started writing songs, three thousand of them. If you write that many tunes, some of them are bound to be heard. When Dolly Parton died this week after a brief illness, people praised her unanimously. Not just for her music, which came from an honest heart, but for the kind of life she led.
In honor of her father, she created a literacy program that mails books to 850,000 children each month. She created jobs in the depressed area where she was from, funded vaccinations and medical research, and offered a high school scholarship program that reduced the regional drop-out rate from 35% to 6%. She donated millions to flood victims, rebuilt communities destroyed by hurricanes, and advocated for those excluded – all while keeping a sense of humor about herself and a deep concern for all in need.
Someone summed it up this way, “Every time I was with her, I always went away feeling better about myself and more optimistic about the world.”
What’s the word? Integrity, that’s the word. Integrity with the love of God. Integrity with God’s purposes for the world.
Could I end it this way? In a world
of morally empty public figures, be a Dolly Parton.
[1] https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2016/03/11/150-people-who-made-scranton-great-us-rep-joseph-m-mcdade/
[2] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message,
Psalm 26:9-11.
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