Psalm 149

Reading the text is always an unpredictable process ... sure, we can sort of determine what the "original" intent might have been, sort of, but it's our response that's most telling.

I've read Psalm 149 a good many times, with thanksgiving and with reservation, because of the violence ... biblical violence in the hands of the powerful is, at best, dangerous; but perhaps it can be read in another way, and that's what struck me this morning.

V.6, "Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands."

Yes, in the eager hands of the already-powerful, such a verse can be disastrous. The Erik Princes of this world love this kind of stuff, and exult in the love of "arms for christ."

Yet as I read it this morning, it reminded me that our praise of God can never be separated from the tasks at hand, the tasks of living and caring for what it is right and good, promoting the wellbeing of a society, and especially defending those whose voices have been muted by the powerful.

The text goes on: "to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron...."

I think of Bonhoeffer's fateful decision to participate in the bomb plot to kill Hitler, which, of course, is an extreme measure, but Bonhoeffer knew full well that love for the nation, for the Jews, now required a dramatic move to remove the source of the nation's ills.

I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., who made clear that violence was never to be offered to violence. But the text makes clear, I believe, that in the struggle for right, there can be no laying downing and simply taking it.

The Civil Rights demonstrators, while refraining from proactive violence, made it clear to the nation that Black People would not longer "take it," but in their determination to cross the bridge or to order a coke at the local drugstore counter, they "violated" the social boundaries and put chains on the powerful.

Lots of folks told them to go back to church and pray, put it into God's hands, and God would sort it all out. But it became evident that God's hands were tied by the powerful representatives of the Jim Crow, and all the prayer in all the world wouldn't open up voting rights or french fries at the local lunch counter. But only a forceful presence that dared to cross the lines and confront the lies.

Well, the upshot of this is both complex and simple: to praise God with our voice is meaningless unless the sword is in our hand, ready to clear the way, make straight the way of the LORD, and put into chains those forces and ideas that make a mockery of religion and love to hurt the weak.

And, that a sword in the hand, always dangerous, has to be linked to praise, lest the sword become a law unto itself, and violence for good simply becomes violence.

So was my reading this morning of Psalm 149.

I Was Feeling Good Until ... Joshua 6.21

It's a good morning.

My wife is back in town, and me little heart is happy.

As with most mornings, the Daily Lectionary ... the Bible ... you know, THE BIBLE ... which I've studied for most of my life, taught to so many, and from which I've preached endless sermons, some of which were even pretty darn good. Ha!

But, as of late, I'm reading with careful eyes ... and things are hitting me hard ... like this morning's piece from Joshua, with Jericho in ruins, and Joshua says: Take all the valuables, the gold, silver and bronze, and we'll put them into the LORD's treasury, but as for everything else, everyone else, man, woman and child, dogs and cats, cows and goats, devoted [what a word to use] for destruction. Death, m'boys, death; carnage and destruction, kill 'em all ... they don't deserve life; their land is our land. Preserve Rahab and her family; she helped us. But as for the rest, kill' em. As for the city, burn it. As for the future, cursed be anyone who tries to rebuild it. 

Oh dear, what can I say?

There was a time when I would have said: Blood and terror, but such were the times.

These days, I simply say, Blood and terror ... and horrible and hideous ... yes, this happens; this is what nations do to one another; and every nation says that it's their god who commands it, who commends them for it; a god of unrelenting violence who finds blood rather tasty. And for those who care at all about this earth, about life, a word of rejection is needed here. A word that puts material like this into a museum, into a display of sadness, titled, this is what people do when they misconceive god.

Sadder, still, what this bloody business engenders in many who read it ... the Puritans and early Americans who saw the Indigenous Peoples as Israel looked upon the citizens of Jericho ... and down through the ages, as European Christians colonized the world, wiping out tens of thousands of people in a heartbeat, if not by sword, then by disease, and enslaving millions, devoting to a life of unrelenting cruelty and sorrow. Yuppers! The LORD is on our side, and the sword is the way of the LORD. 

I'll not do a Thomas Jefferson on the Bible, with cut and paste ... to make it more "sanitary" and pleasing. No, this is part of the Sacred Text, it's there, and I have to deal with it.

But no longer will I offer justification for it, or try to make it a metaphor, or allegory, or anything like that No, not at all. 

It's just horrible, hideous, miserable and unworthy of the Creator of the World. That ancient Israel should conceive of itself in this kind of blood, and by the sword is not unusual; this is how nations behave. But it's not what God commands or commends!

But that Jews today, and Christians, and anyone else, of whatever creed, who read this for justification of violence and domination, is the greater horror, and the greater crime against God and God's Creation.

It was hard to read today ... I was feeling good, and then this dirty little ditty, if you will ... that the way of the LORD is the way of the sword ... and if Joshua had the temerity to curse those who would try to rebuild the city, perhaps a curse upon those who take up these texts of violence and use them to justify their laws, their guns, their violence, their domination.

But, then, no curse is needed.

Because those who live by the sword die by it. The Bible says that, too, sort of. Whoever wrote that piece (Aeschylus) knew the story, and when Jesus quotes it (he quotes a Greek philosopher, rather than someone from his own religious tradition), he, too, knew the story, better than any of us. 

Now is not the time for me to say: the sword is the device of hell, not heaven; that "death to all" is the cry of the demented, and not the Word of the LORD.

For God so loved the world, that God gave ... upon this hangs all the Law and the Prophets ... and by such is how I read the Bible.

A Young Man Reading His Bible

A young man, neatly dressed, suit and tie, hair combed back tightly, on the Red Line to downtown, reading his Bible ... from the look of it, somewhere in the Minor Prophets.

He was so ernest, so intent ... yet I felt a great sadness for him ... wondering if anyone with any skill or knowledge was guiding him.

When the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading the Bible on his way home, God sent Stephen to him, to help. The man confessed he didn’t understand what he was reading, and Stephen provided guidance.Individual Bible reading is a good thing, if one knows how to read it, much like reading any piece of literature.

One simply doesn't pick up Plato and start to read ... or if one does, sooner or later, at the very least, some googling will be in order. And perhaps consulting with others, or enrolling in school.

Whether it be the Gideons and their "miracle stories" about the man in the hotel room, ready to take his own life, but at the last minute, reading a Gideon Bible and turning to God for help ... or any of the miracle stories told by evangelicals on TV and radio and pulpit, people are set up for a spiritual crash. Much like telling an adolescent to get behind the wheel of a car and jut go - God will guide you.

Whether it be Augustin or Calvin, St. Teresa or Mother Teresa, the spiritual life requires community, and never a community of ignorance, but a community of learning, scholarship, study and reflection.


"Put a bunch of cabbage heads together and all you get is slaw" is true enough for so much of evangelicalism ... no wonder things get so crazy as parents who "trust the LORD" let their little baby die because they don't believe in doctors.

Or a 19-year old boy is beaten to death by his parents and others who wanted him to confess his sins, whatever that means.

Such hideous perversions emerge out of the cloud of ignorance, a miasma of death hanging over all of it, where good is bad and bad is good - a world turned totally inside out and upside down, a world always isolated from the larger currents of religion and culture.

I wonder what will happen to that ernest young man on the train reading his Bible?

Will he find someone to guide him to maturity of faith? Or will he slip into some hideous realm of hyper-legalism and violence?

I hope not.

But history makes it painfully clear that when isolated from the large and refreshing streams of Christianity and human culture, even the clearest water soon grows murky and fetid.