December 8th, 2019 - Download a Worship Bulletin Above Psalm 72:1-8, 18-19
Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen. This week I had the opportunity to get together with several friends whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time. We had been talking about this trip for years - a trip to Orlando to visit the Harry Potter theme park. We are all such huge fans of the series, and as we had all grown up with the books, we had also grown up with the characters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were in their teen years while we, too, were moving through middle and high school. When the movies were being released, it was so exciting to see the words leap off the page and manifest on the big screen. We were finally able to fully visualize the scenes, and we could make better sense of the storyline and how the characters interacted with each other. The dried ink on the page suddenly became alive and dynamic. And the same thing happened when we walked through Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade this week in Orlando, exploring the wizarding world, and eating at the Leaky Cauldron, a cozy pub hidden behind a brick facade. There’s just something about being there, in the flesh, to experience it for ourselves. Maybe you’ve experienced something like this. For me, many of my friends are friends at a distance - we’ve all gone our separate ways and live in very different parts of the country and world. And so often, we share a longing to be with each other. Yes, we send each other cards and notes, and we talk on the phone quite frequently, but it’s just not the same as getting to see each other in person, decorating Christmas cookies together, laughing until we cry, sharing meals, and catching up. It is an incarnate blessing to be present with one another, embodying the love we share, an otherwise invisible expression of joy made tangible. This morning’s scripture reading comes to us from the Psalms, a collection of poems and prayers that express great emotion in times of turmoil and times of blessing. Our particular passage is a prayer from the Israelites hoping for a righteous king who would arise from the ranks as a just and compassionate king, one who cares for the poor and defends the earth, one who is eternally powerful, who brings about a flourishing of life and blessing. Asking for justice isn’t asking for mere fairness or that the wicked would get their lot; rather, in the Hebrew, justice is translated from mishpat, which simply means that the poorest in society will be taken care of. You see, the Israelites had had quite the run around with their previous kings, kings whom they had prayed for, even though God made it clear that an earthly king wouldn’t be suitable. The Israelites cried and prayed for a human king to help guide them - and God gave them what they asked for - even though the results of the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon left the kingdom in shambles. They had made messes left and right - the gap between the rich and the poor was ever growing - and at this point, the Israelites knew that they needed someone different. Out of their desperation, Psalm 72 was their prayer, their longing for an incarnate blessing, for an eternal king who would right the wrongs of previous generations of kings. They prayed for the Prince of Peace, for the Great Counselor, the Perfector of our Faith. This is a longing to be brought into a new kingdom, one in which all people are valued and loved and not treated simply as subjects in the hierarchy system. Instead, as one commentary puts it, “the fruit of the king’s labors will be the days when righteousness flourishes and peace abounds. All that the sovereign is and does shall be life-giving to the people, a source of refreshment and renewal for the whole of creation.” When I think about my friends and family, and the people I surround myself with, they are a life-giving presence in this world. And Christ is the source of that life, not an overbearing king who rules by force, but rather one whose warm embrace envelopes all regardless of who they are or where they’ve been. The “subjects” in Christ’s kingdom are royalty themselves, being made new and precious through the grace of God. The Israelites’ plea for a king who would truly meet their needs results in God’s Divine incarnation in Christ; as the story goes, Mary is approached by angels and conceives Jesus by the Holy Spirit. But this sacred story takes place much later historically than our passage this morning. Psalm 72 can be dated to about 1000 BCE, which means the Israelites had to wait generations upon generations for their king to come, for Jesus to be born. And even up to Jesus’ birth, we see that King Herod is threatened by Jesus’ presence on earth and seeks to eliminate his adversary by ordering the death of all infant boys under the age of two. And even today, we recognize that some world leaders are less compassionate than for which we’d hope. But we are given the hope of a time to come, a longing for real justice and for wrongs to be righted. It is a longing for an enfleshed presence of embodied love made real. What does it mean to wait? What does it mean to be told, “not yet, but soon”? During this Advent season, we are awaiting the king to come, and the kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This passage is “a petition that God will give Jerusalem a king beyond all their imaginings, who will bring a reign of justice and prosperity for all. This all-encompassing plea asks for a ruler empowered by God who will serve the common good. In Advent, we are also waiting - waiting not only for personal rebirth but also for the consummation of our world in the coming of the Messiah’s reign of peace and justice.” So yes, we are waiting, but it isn’t passive. Rather, we are actively waiting and watching, finding ways we can serve God and others through the gifts we’ve been given. An interesting component of this passage is that “Psalm 72 is presented in the Bible as a psalm of Solomon,” and a prayer of David, son of Jesse, both of whom are kings who had royally messed things up, so this was a “prayer by the kings for the kings,” meaning that “they would be expected to become a part of the answer to their own prayers.” What is our role in praying for ourselves, our community, and nation, and making those prayers incarnate, real, manifest, and embodied, partnering with God to see God’s will be done? What is our responsibility, and what is God already doing in our midst? As we sing our final hymn this morning, it is a longing and a prayer for Emmanuel, which is translated as God with us. It is a prayer for a king who will set free the captives, whose wisdom will surpass all earthly understanding, who will be a light in the darkness, who is the answer to our prayer. I invite you into a time of reflection as we sing our last hymn, and may we continue to seek the light despite the darkness. May we pray for ourselves and all of creation as move toward the justice we know is possible, partnering with God in God’s life-giving ways. And may we experience that life-giving Divine Love through Christ, love personified in human form, the incarnate blessing. - Pastor Christy Wright
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