June 9, 2002 -- THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST -- Proper 5
Psalm 50:7-15
Color: Green
Psalm 50
Title: “True moral behavior is really gratitude-in-action.”
This psalm is cast in the mold of a lawsuit. Since the prophets also used the format of the lawsuit to accuse Israel and the Israelites of sin, to lay out the evidence, to declare guilty and pronounce the sentence of condemnation, usually temporary, contingent upon real reform, this psalm has been described as a prophetic liturgy, much like a homily, probably delivered at a Covenant Renewal ceremony somewhat akin to the Catholic Church’s communal celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In this psalm God acts as prosecutor first and then judge, pronouncing sentence. It has four stanzas: vv. 1-6, in which all rise as the judge enters, describing him in terms of the Sinai theophany; vv. 7-15, in which that God declares that religious ritual, i.e. sacrifice, is not the issue; vv. 16-21, in which the real issue, i.e. true praise and the neglect of the Covenant stipulations, is outlined; and vv. 22-23, in which sentence is passed. We cannot tell the time of its composition and every date from the 8th century prophets, especially its affinity with Hosea 6: 1-6, to the Persian period has been proposed. Given the classic prophetic theology of this psalm, it could have been written at any time in Israel’s history, even today.
Verses one to six, blending the style of a prophetic lawsuit wherein God, the judge, enters the courtroom with all the majesty and respect he deserves with the stage props of the Sinai theophany, the psalm leaves no doubt who is in charge. Indeed, only God speaks in the psalm; Israel listens in silence. Heaven and earth witness the proceedings.
Verses seven to fifteen, in these verses, one of the most exalted statements we have about God’s “otherness,” God makes it clear that he is in no way dependent upon humans, for sacrifice or anything else. It is the other way around. God specifically mentions every kind of animal sacrifice offered to him- bull, he-goat, beast, cattle, birds- and makes clear he eats or needs none of them. Indeed, all the animals of the earth are his already! At the same time, God makes clear that sacrifices as such are not the issue. However, they are acceptable to God, who neither needs them nor feeds on them, only if they represent the person offering them and only if that person is praising and thanking God elsewhere in his or her life. When God’s people recognize that it is they who are dependent upon him, then will he turn and grant their needs. The bribery that inauthentic worship represents does not work with God.
Verses thirteen and fourteen in the Living bible read, “No, I don’t need your sacrifices of flesh and blood. What I want from you is your true thanks; I want your promises fulfilled. I want you to trust me in your times of trouble, so I can rescue you and you can give me glory.” Which makes the meaning very clear what god really wants.
Verses sixteen to twenty-one, God gets specific about the charges he levels against his people. Citing examples from the second part of the Decalogue, the commandments having to do with relations between and among covenant members, the commandments against stealing, adultery, bearing false witness, God makes it clear that he will not remain silent. Were he to do so he would be like those he accuses, complicitous in their misdeeds. In their religious language and their rituals God’s people profess allegiance to him, but in their practice, in real life, they disregard him. The exploitation of others, especially the poor, by stealing from them, lying about them, by sexually exploiting them, renders any sacrifice to God or any religious practice hypocritical. God is not at all like humans, especially the wicked. It matters to him how humans treat him, but it also matters equally how they treat one another.
Verses twenty-two to twenty-three, God gives the basis for his judgments. True worshippers will be saved; false worshippers, those who profess without practice, will be condemned. The way to purify a sacrifice is not to wash the animal but to wash away the sins of the offerer.
Sermon
This psalm could have been composed by any of the prophets. It expresses the fundamental prophetic message from God to his people, people of all times and places. God desires authenticity much more than correctness. In this psalm the contrast is between religious behavior, strictly speaking, that is, liturgical behavior, and morality. However, the contrast could also be drawn between “correct’ moral behavior, that is, “by the book” behavior, and real morality, morality guided by the Spirit rather than dictated by the law. The message of the prophets culminates, of course in Jesus, who did away with animal sacrifice and put self-sacrifice in its place. In doing so, he put all religious and liturgical behavior in its place as well. None of the prophets condemned “sacrifice,” outright or wholesale. They all recognized that it has its place, but, at the same time, cannot take the place of real ‘sacrifice,” which is praise of and thanks to God.
Praising God is simply recognizing God as God and God where God is, that is, everywhere. God is praised when his presence is recognized and deferred to, when humans take God’s express will into account, defer to it, and do it. Moral behavior, real, true moral behavior is really gratitude-in-action. Having recognized that all comes from God as a gift, the true worshipper expresses gratitude by respecting the gift and behaving in ways that show that respect. True worship of God is not confined to liturgical times and obviously religious places. True worship is the daily habit of living in the conscious presence of God and responding to that presence out of gratitude for the gift of life, divine life shared, thanks to God.
The sanctuary is always in danger of being reduced to a stage and the sacred officials to mere actors, frequently bad ones at that. The hierarchy of any church is always in danger of living double lives- one for the public and for public consumption, while the other is for private indulgence. God is not fooled and will keep silent for only so long, long enough for the person to freely repent, cooperate with his grace and become authentic. Eventually, it catches up with the offender. While publicly professing to take God very seriously and while publicly pretending to take themselves seriously, in the privacy of their hearts and minds they take neither God nor themselves seriously. Trivializing God’s ways and laws, they trivialize God. Really, though, they trivialize themselves and cheapen their worth before God. They reduce revealed dogma to “issues,” not truths to be taught and appropriated, but “issues” to be debated and won. They reduce morality to “correctness,” a code of immorality, behaviors to be avoided rather than behaviors to be embraced, all negatives, no positives.
That said, it is not only to the sanctuary and its sacred officers that God speaks. He speaks to all of us. He condemns our living our lives in compartments. God sees no difference between what we call the sacred and the profane. The entire world is his. All the animals are his. All is sacred to him, though humans might have profaned his world. To God the real world of work and life and the symbolic world of worship are but one world. God wants us to be authentic, the same person at all times and in all places, not to compartmentalize life into concrete and separate categories. For, when we do that, we cut ourselves off from him. We cannot relate to God by trying to carve his world into separate pieces and give him some and reserve the rest for ourselves. We are not God’s equals, nor do we feed him or he need us.
In this psalm God reminds us how different he is from us. Though we are made in his image and likeness, we shall never be his equal, let alone his superior. We will always need him, while he will never need us. He will always feed us, while we can never feed the one who never needs to eat. Even when he became our “equal” in the humanity of Jesus Christ, he showed us how superior he was to us in the way he lived the very humanity he gave us. He showed us what shams we all are. Yet, he empowered us to become his authentic children, if, and only if, we accepted his only-begotten child on his terms.
God is the judge of what is right and wrong.
It is for humans to accept God’s judgments, not debate them or debase them.
True worship of God is found in authentic behavior, not religious posturing.
God is not fooled by pious actions, empty of authentic faith.
Eventually, though God might keep silent for a time, humans must suffer the consequences of their behavior.
God’s Silence: If God were like human beings, he would be stepping in and correcting people, punishing people, for every misdeed they do. And he would be doing it immediately. In fact, one of our earliest realizations about God is that he does not do that. As children, if we do something wrong and our parents see it, we are immediately corrected and maybe even punished, if justice warrants punishment. Or, we are corrected when our parents find out about it. As children, we are taught that God sees everything. So, when we do wrong and are not corrected or punished by God right away we start to think he either did not see the deed or he does not consider it wrong or wrong enough to correct. This is, of course, a childish, as opposed to a childlike, posture. Unfortunately, it is hard to grow out of. It is possible to live an entire lifetime erroneously thinking that God either does not see or care what we do. We can erroneously believe or hope, really, that all those behaviors the commandments condemn or the Bible condemns really are not so bad in God’s eyes. If they were, why doesn’t he do something about it? This psalm helps answer that question. Verse three, says, “Our God comes and will not be silent.” However, God does not intervene or interfere right away. There are many passages, especially in Wisdom Literature, that teach that God allows us time to repent on our own. God has set things up in such a way that the consequences of our behavior will come back to either haunt us, if we reject the lesson, or to teach us, if we accept and learn. That is what God is getting at in verse seventeen, where he says, “You hate discipline,” meaning you refuse to learn from the bad things that happen in your life, either because of your own doing, sinning, or that of others. Thus, God does remain silent, but only for a time. He is silent not because he doesn’t see or care, but because he wants us to come around to his way of thinking and doing by freely choosing to do so. When God finally does speak, there will be no debating or negotiating, as is the case with humans. He is not like us. He is the arbiter of right and wrong. There will be neither a debate nor a vote. The Covenant we have entered into with God, thanks to Christ, does not make us trading partners with God. God is not a client among many others that we do business with. Nor is he a “consumer” of human products like sacrificed animals. Though he may be silent for a time, we would be childish if we thought that was his final stance. As he says in verse twenty-one, “When you do these things should I be silent? Or do you think that I am like you?”
Our Silence: The old saying that silence is consent applies here. It is humans who are silent in the face of injustice, prejudice and human exploitation. God says that that silence is not good, that humans are supposed to give voice to the justice of God, not just noise -voice but choice-voice. They are to choose the right course of action, stand up and be counted, and even fall down and be killed if justice demands it. Associating with thieves and adulterers is a pretty sure way of becoming like them. Associating with God’s faithful ones is a pretty sure way of ensuring that we become more faithful to him. Silence is more than the absence of speech. In fact, silence can speak volumes. Silence is the absence of objection, the absence of an alternative, acquiescence. The worst silence is the silly silence, wherein our liturgical processions, empty of authentic profession, are turned into parades for entertainment and our moral protestations, empty of sincerity, are turned into petty peeves, meant only to fill the void of silence for the want of something better to do. While making a lot of noise, we can be really silent if no one is listening because we are making no sense. Only an authentic life, lived in praise and gratitude, makes sense when the judge of all finally speaks. Amen.
