Psalm 36:5-10 Commentary

Psalm 36 contains a striking line about God: “In your light we see light.”  It is a curious turn of phrase, seeming very nearly tautological.  What does it mean that we can only see light when we are in the midst of some other light?  It may be a way of saying that we cannot see anything without being illumined by the presence and guidance of God.  Or maybe it can also be understood to mean that only when we recognize God’s true light can we also recognize the things in life that are right, that are morally bright.  When we stand in God’s good light, we see all things as they truly are.

But if so then apparently Psalm 36 also bears witness to some other things we can see by God’s light, although the Revised Common Lectionary would prefer it if we did not as a matter of fact see these other things.  What things?  Well, the topic of the opening four and the closing two verses that the Lectionary skips.  Yes, the middle portion of verses 5-10 contains a lot of lyric observations about God and in particular God’s grandeur, righteousness, love, and grace.  But those glowing sentiments are bracketed by sad observations about wicked people.

The opening verses sketch a portrait of people who have so little regard for God and so much flattering regard for themselves that they cannot even see sin for what it is.  They lie so deceitfully so often that they may honestly not even know the truth anymore.  They cannot tell right from wrong and generally don’t bother to try either.  Curiously unlike some other psalms, Psalm 36 nowhere asks God to intervene or to deal harshly with such evil folks.  It just gives us a picture of how bad off such people are and if there is a hint of loathing in the observations in verses 1-4, there is also a sense of sadness and pity here.  Then in the closing verses the psalmist does ask God for protection from such people and concludes with the spectacle of the wicked having fallen down somehow and are now unable to stand back up.

Apparently, then, when you are able to have the highest regard for the God of Israel, you are forced to see what a godless life looks like too.  You recognize evil when you see it and you cannot but help to lament its presence in our world and how wickedness so consumes some people they don’t know left from right, right from wrong.  This is a package deal.  Love God to the highest degree and you will also both see and loath the anti-God way of being in this world.  You cannot have one without the other.

So why would the RCL have us not ponder those verses in Psalm 36?  Does it seem indelicate to talk so candidly about the makeup of bad people?  Are we to avoid the rendering of judgments of any kind?  Or do we think that following the Prince of Peace in Christ Jesus the Lord now means we focus on blessing and affirming what is good and do not spend our days spewing forth the venom of condemnations of any kind?

Well, let’s admit that there is something to the idea that as Christians we should be chiefly in the business of proclaiming Good News, the Gospel.  We should want to let people know about Jesus in positive way through words that paint such a lyric portrait of moral beauty and love and grace that people want to get in on all that.  As a teacher of preaching and the person who directs the Center that runs this preaching website, I don’t react well to sermons that do nothing other than wag bony fingers of condemnation and judgment, most especially sermons that do that as a way to make those of us on the inside feel good about ourselves even as we ignore the sometimes woeful shortcomings and sins of the church itself.

True enough.  However, we can never be blind to the fact that it was precisely the woeful fallenness and downright wicked nature of many people that necessitated the death of God’s own Son on a cross.  The Calvinist wing of the Reformed faith from which I hail is often caricatured as having dour hang-ups with sin as we drone on and on about Total Depravity and the like.  And it is true that one of the Reformed Confessions, The Canons of Dort, is very blunt where sin and evil are concerned.  But only and ever in the service of saying first of all that this is why our Savior had to suffer and die and then second of all to note that the light of the Gospel shines all the more brightly in our hearts when we realize what had to be conquered for salvation to come.  Soft pedal how bad sin and evil are and you mute how grand the Gospel is.

So yes and as Psalm 36 affirms: it is only in God’s light that we can see light.  But this also helps us distinguish between light and darkness, good and evil, righteous ways of living and warped ways of wanton living where things are so bad that many no longer know the truth when they see it.  The church does not need to dwell unduly on such unhappy realities and just pointing out what is morally afoul in the world ought not be the only or the primary message people hear from Christians.  But we cannot avoid seeing what’s what in the world and lamenting it.  If we love God and all his ways as much as the psalmist does, we will both note and sorrow over all those who so clearly do not know God and do not aspire to be remotely God-like either.

Illustration Idea

In one of his essays Frederick Buechner recalled overhearing a conversation between a rather pompous East Coast sophisticate and a Christian person.  At one point the sophisticate said how sad she thought it was that in this day and age people still used words like “fornication” and “adultery” and the like.  But then the other person replied something to the effect, “It is far less sad that people still use that kind of language these days than the fact that people still do the activities such words describe.”