Were you the first one chosen when picking teams to play kickball, baseball, or football, or were you often one of the last? Although I was usually one of the first to be picked for neighborhood or school teams--after I reached a certain age and level of athletic ability--I remember visiting my cousin when I was about 11 or 12 and being picked last--dead last!--for kickball, out of a field of about twenty. It was a miserable feeling, though I pretended it didn't bother me. (I made an unassisted triple play that day, which made me feel quite a bit better about it!) I'll never forget the feeling of not being wanted. No wonder religions are so successful when they lead their followers to believe that they have been chosen especially by God! Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims consider themselves the chosen people of God. In a bizarre twist of this idea, Christian Dispensationalists consider both themselves and Jews (after their impending conversion to Christianity following the Rapture) God's chosen people, albeit in different eras of history. Many European settlers in the Americas considered themselves God's chosen people, relegating the native inhabitants to a lesser status, as did the white settlers in Australia. Even Hitler considered himself to be chosen by God to unify and "cleanse" Europe. "I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker," he said. Jeremiah lived in the midst of a people who considered themselves God's chosen people. A century earlier, the city of Jerusalem had been spared from destruction by the Assyrian army by what the faithful believed to be divine intervention. The story of God's deliverance led to the idea of the inviolability of Zion, that is, that the city of Jerusalem, as God's chosen city, could never be taken by the enemy. However, as Jeremiah learned when he went to visit the potter, those who are God's chosen people today may not be tomorrow. "At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it." God is sovereign, and God is not constrained to treat one group as chosen today on the basis of yesterday's actions. Who are the people of God, then? The people of God are those who worship God in spirit and in truth, who seek God with humility, who treat their neighbors with justice, and who strive for peace rather than war. You can't tell the people of God by the color of their skin, or the language they speak, or the badges they wear, or the churches or synagogues or mosques or temples that they attend, but you can tell them by the way they live their lives. There is absolutely no point in arguing over who are God's chosen people, because God's people are not a single group or nationality or religion, but those who do the will of God today.
Imagine that you've been working outside on a hot summer's day. Sweat is pouring down your face, and you decide to take a break. Sitting in the cool of the shade, you pour yourself a nice, cold glass of lemonade. As you drink it--doesn't it taste great?--you get to the bottom of the glass, and you feel something strange and prickly against your lips. You jerk the glass down and spit out the last mouthful of lemonade, and you discover, much to your horror, that at the bottom of your glass is a large cockroach. I feel a little bit like that when I read Psalm 139. The first 18 verses of the psalm, including today's lectionary reading, are a beautiful picture of God, who knows all and is everywhere. The psalmist paints God as someone who knows all about him, and who has known him from before birth. Wherever the psalmist goes, God is already there, leading, guiding, and protecting. The psalmist offers praise to God, and he is amazed by God's wisdom. "How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" So far so good, but then comes verse 19: "O that you would kill the wicked, O God." And verse 21: "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?" And verse 22: "I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies." What are modern followers of God to make of this psalm? Those who selected the verses for today's reading simply omitted the offending verses, and I applaud them for doing so; they should be omitted from public reading in worship, at least if no additional explanation is offered. However, we need to be aware that the verses are there, for they reflect the mindset of a good number of people today who think of themselves as people of God. In fact, some will quote verses like this to justify their hatred of others. Others will point out that God is frequently portrayed as calling for the death of the wicked, especially, but not exclusively, in the Old Testament, believing that this permits God's people today to do the same. When I hear this kind of talk, I'm reminded of the second-century Christian "heretic" Marcion, who rejected the God of the Old Testament as a God of war, as opposed to the God revealed by Jesus who was a God of peace and love. While I don't agree with Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament or with his identification of the Old Testament God as the demiurge, who created the world with all its evil, but who was distinct from the God of the New Testament, I can understand his theological struggle. When I listen to the rhetoric of warmongers and bigots, who claim to be acting in the name of God, I sometimes wonder if we're worshiping the same God. Maybe the key to dealing with this psalm is a proper understanding of verse 17: "How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!" The psalmist admits that he is unable to fully grasp God's thoughts, and I would suggest that the following verses support his claim. Certainly from my own Christian perspective, killing the wicked and hating the enemy reflect human rather than divine ways of thinking. Of course that raises the question, in what ways are my own thoughts far from God's? It's easier to see the shortcomings of others than to identify one's own. I will continue to read the first 18 verses of this psalm as a paean to an omniscient and omnipresent God who loves and cares for me. I'll reject the sentiment reflected in verses 19-22 as a gross misunderstanding of God's thoughts. And I'll pray with the psalmist, the words of the concluding verses: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
For another discussion of this passage, click here.
I saw someone wearing a tee shirt that said, "Except for slavery, Nazism, and genocide, war never solved anything." There's a similar one on the market that says, "Except for ending slavery, fascism, Nazism, and communism, war never solved anything." In a similar vein, Zell Miller, the Republican senator from Georgia (everyone from Georgia knows that Zell hasn't been a Democrat for years), made a series of remarkable claims at the Republican National Convention earlier this week.
It has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.Like the designers of the tee shirts mentioned above, Zell Miller is wrong, both historically and theologically. War didn't end slavery; in fact, the Civil War was started by people trying to keep slavery in place! Similarly, war didn't end fascism, Nazism, or communism. The fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany were defeated in World War II, but their perverse ideas have continued to resurface from time to time, sometimes in splinter groups and sometimes in mainstream political parties. Communism fell in Eastern Europe as a result of brave political dissidents taking to the streets (remember the Velvet Revolution?). And Zell has it completely backwards. It is reporters, poets, and agitators who ensure freedom of press, speech, and assembly. All too often the military and the police--both in the U.S. and around the world--act against those who try to exercise these freedoms. What Zell and the tee shirt makers don't understand is the power of an idea. Paul wrote to his colleague Philemon and asked him to receive his runaway slave Onesimus back without punishment. What is more, Paul strongly suggests that Philemon free Onesimus so that he can return and minister to Paul. "Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother--especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord." Paul didn't send a Roman cohort with Onesimus to force Philemon to free him, he simply planted the idea in Philemon's mind that slavery and brotherhood in Christ were incompatible concepts. Harriet Beecher Stowe didn't contribute to the end of slavery with a musket but with a pen, through her book Uncle Tom's Cabin. Boris Yeltsin didn't defeat the communist insurgents outside the Russian Parliament building with missiles but by shaking hands with enemy soldiers inside the tanks. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Frank Chicane, and others didn't defeat the Apartheid regime in South Africa with bullets but with ideas such as racial equality and with peaceful marches through the streets of Cape Town. Guns, tanks, and bombs are powerful, but ideas are more powerful still, if they catch the mind of the public. Just ask Muqtada al-Sadr. If we want to defeat terrorism and establish peace and justice around the world, we would do better to follow the example of Paul than the faulty historical analysis of Zell Miller. The world needs better ideas, not better weapons.
Mark Antony (or at least Shakespeare) knew how to use words in ways that were counter to their most obvious meaning in order to get his point across. When Antony begins speaking, the crowd is generally in favor of the murderous acts of Brutus and his colleagues, and it is glad that Caesar is dead. During Antony's speech, he calls Brutus an honorable man four times, never overtly criticizing him or his actions, yet by the end of the speech, the crowd is out for blood, the blood of Brutus and his colleagues. How did Antony accomplish this feat? He used his words in such a way that his listeners understood that he meant the opposite. Jesus often spoke to the crowds in ways that would have confounded them if they had taken the words literally. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." A survey of Jesus' other teachings clearly demonstrates that Jesus did not intend for his disciples to hate their relatives, and even themselves, so, like Antony, Jesus was obviously saying something else. His point was that the call to discipleship is one not to be undertaken lightly. A lot of people like the idea of being a disciple, but not too many like the work of being a disciple. Discipleship demands sacrifice. God sometimes calls us to leave our families and friends and travel across the country or around the world to serve others in God's name. In exchange, discipleship offers new family and friends to make the sojourn bearable, and even enjoyable. The imagery of taking up one's cross must have been striking to the disciples before the crucifixion, and even more so in the days and years immediately following the crucifixion, when the Romans still used the cross as an instrument of torture and death. Discipleship demands death: death to one's own dreams and ambitions, death to one's pleasures, death to control over one's own life. In exchange, however, discipleship offers a new vision of God's will for one's life, new joys, and an acceptance that God is in control. Discipleship means counting the cost, which is often large. In exchange, it offers a new way of doing cost-benefit analysis, one that stresses not monetary rewards but rewards such as lives changed and new relationships established. Count the cost, Jesus said, if you want to be my disciples. You're liable to lose a lot if you choose to become a disciple, but what you gain will be immeasurably greater.Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious; If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest- For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me; But Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And sure he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.