The implication being: that ain’t happening now.
Psalm Reading: Psalm 85:1–2, 8–13
For Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011 Year B—Advent 2
You don’t have to be some fancy biblical scholar to realize that things aren’t going so well for God’s people in Psalm 85.
The Psalmist starts out by reminding God that God did Jacob a solid and looked favorably on the land, restored fortune and forgave and pardoned the sinful. The implication being: that ain’t happening now.
Defy the RCL Gods!
I implore you at this point to defy the Revised Common Lectionary gods and include the excised verses 3-6.
Here we can witness the Psalmist at his or her manipulative best. They move effortlessly from reminding God that God used to be forgiving and restorative to saying that, Hey, can’t you do the same for us? You gonna just be angry forever? Of course you won’t God…plus if you revive us we’ll totally rejoice in you.” Seems a bit sycophantic doesn’t it?
The Preacher’s Process
Here’s the thing: in verse 7 the Psalmist goes from speaking to God to speaking about God. I wonder if we can read verses 1-7 as an inner dialog of the Psalmist (or a preacher)? Perhaps this is not unlike what I (and perhaps you) as a modern day preacher experience all the time in which I doubt God, blame God, ignore and dismiss God in the process of trying to listen to God for a Word for God’s people.
Verse 8: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts—this feels to me like the meta-psalm within the psalm, meaning that the movement from the beginning of the psalm to the end of the psalm is one in which the Psalmist does what is written in verse 8. The Psalmist moves from working out their issues with God so that they can actually listen for a Word from God to speak to God’s people.
And if we choose—just for today—to read Psalm 85:1-6 as the interior, spiritual, struggle of one called to preach a Word of hope and grace to God’s people, then I wonder if, maybe, we can also read verses 8-13 as a Word to us saying that it is the Lord who will give what is good. We just have to proclaim it.
The Hardest Question
Who exactly is the Psalmist trying to convince here? Convince God that God’s not really an angry spiteful bastard and should stop acting like it? Or remind him or herself that God is actually gracious and merciful slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love despite the fact that it seems the proverbial creek keeps rising?
Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. She is the author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury, 2008) and blogs at www.sarcasticlutheran.com and Jim Wallis' www.GodsPolitics.com. Nobody really believes she’s an ordained pastor in the ELCA. Maybe it’s the sleeve tattoos or the fact that she swears like a truck driver. Either way…she’s fine with it. Nadia lives in Denver with her family of four.
