Psalms 110-113

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POST XLV OF LX

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The Book of Common Prayer (1979) includes a plan for reading the Book of Psalms in morning and evening installments for 30 days.  I am therefore blogging through the Psalms in 60 posts.

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 226

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Psalm 110, a royal psalm, is a difficult text.  It changes voices, forcing one to study the psalm closely just to determine when “he ” is God and when “he” is the human king.  In Psalm 110 the monarch (presumably David or a member of his dynasty) is close to God.  This is the same God who, in Psalms 111-113, cares for the poor and expects us to do the same.  God, almighty and metaphorically “enthroned on high,” also cares effectively for the needy, we read.

Then why is the rate of homelessness so high?  Then why, when I drive in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, do I see people begging at major intersections.  Some of them are professional panhandlers who choose begging over a job and find it more lucrative than much work, I realize, but not all of them are.

We–you, O reader, and I–have arrived at the difficult intersection of human and divine responsibilities.  To reduce the matter to human ineffectiveness seems too simplistic to me.  True, human ineffectiveness explains much of the problem, but can God not act directly?  Is not God omnipotent?

Wrestling with difficult questions of divine and human responsibilities is a matter to take seriously and to take to God faithfully.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 20, 2017 COMMON ERA

PROPER 15:  THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, YEAR A

THE FEAST OF JOHN BAJUS, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN TRANSLATOR

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