Psalm 112:1-9 (10) Commentary

It’s never terribly clear to me just what it means when the Revised Common Lectionary puts a single verse in parentheses.  It’s the final verse, verse 10, of Psalm 112 that gets that treatment.  Maybe it’s meant to say “Include it in your sermon or don’t—it’s up to you.”  They are not skipping that verse entirely (as the RCL is prone to do at times) but it’s not quite endorsing it either.  Verse 10 is about the wicked of course (as a lot of skipped RCL verses are).  But in this case, there is in that final verse not a call for God to swat, smite, crush, or be otherwise unpleasant toward wicked people.

Instead verse 10 comes across more as an observation and a prediction.  The wicked will see how wonderfully righteous people and their children fare in this world and it will drive them to distraction.  They’ll be vexed.  They’ll grind their teeth in frustration.  And in the end Psalm 112:10 predicts that all the longings of the wicked will dry up, fizzle out, and come to nothing.  At the end of the cosmic day, it will be the righteous of the earth and their God who will triumph.

We observe on a semi-regular basis in CEP sermon commentaries on the Book of Psalms that lots of songs in the Hebrew Psalter seem too sunny by half when it comes to claiming how swimmingly things will always go for the righteous and how lousy things will inevitably turn out for evil and wicked people.  Perhaps it’s not that in the end and in the long run we don’t believe this will be true.  It’s just that in the short run all over the world what we can observe with our eyes is something akin to the precise opposite of all that.

Wicked people prosper and thrive.  What’s more, not only do righteous people and their children sometimes have a very hard time of it in life, it’s the wicked who cause that to happen.  It’s not as though the righteous just endure stretches of bad luck.  They are actively oppressed by nasty folks.  Admitting this does not exactly represent the picture sketched by Psalm 112.

Even short of that, we also have all known people who are people we’d have little difficulty describing as saints.  A woman I knew in the first congregation I served was so full of the Fruit of the Spirit, was so transparent to Jesus.  She was definitely among the righteous of the world.  And yet she had lost her husband tragically years before I knew her and suffered the illnesses and deaths of several children and grandchildren too.  Hers was the experience of Job.  So here was a righteous one who was not experiencing all of Psalm 112’s wonderful descriptions nor was she seeing her children being “mighty in the land.”  This woman was close to the opposite of all that.

And yet . . .  She was still very much a Christian saint.  She did have a faith that was stronger than you’d guess from someone who had gone through all of the travails she suffered.  And in that way her Christian character—despite everything—fit well with what Psalm 112 sketches out about the righteous.  She was secure in her faith.  I don’t know that it was true that she had no fear of bad news as the psalmist says in verse 7 but her faith knew how to survive bad news.  It already had.  Plenty of times.  She was also a generous person with her time, talent, and treasure and so was also the kind of person Psalm 112 describes.  And you just know that in our Father’s bright kingdom, all those good deeds and that generous, gracious demeanor and posture did bring her great rewards.

We also know that at any given moment we may see the wicked prospering and at times it seems like no one in heaven or on earth is ever going to step in to thwart them.  But then we remember.  We remember that the Third Reich that Hitler said would last 1,000 years only made it maybe a dozen years even as he put a bullet through his head while cowering in a bunker.  We remember how Saddam Hussein built luxury palaces to the impoverishment of his own people but in the end he was hiding in a hole in the ground when he was brought to justice.  We remember any number of tin-plated dictators and wicked strongmen who thundered and swaggered for a few brief moments on the world stage but who eventually were brought to justice, who died, whose empires crumbled.  They may be remembered by history but in despised ways.

But the truly good, the generous, the people who founded philanthropic organizations, who devoted their lives to the poor as Mother Teresa of Calcutta did, who were humble leaders as Gandhi was, who inspired people as Martin Luther King, Jr., did, who nobly called on people to rise above malice and retribution as Abraham Lincoln did: these people are remembered with reverence and gratitude.  Recently I heard a speech by Naomi Tutu, the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  Here was a diminutive man who managed to be a giant in South Africa, who oversaw a Truth & Reconciliation Commission that brought healing to a nation.

“Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.”  Sometimes in the short run but always in the long run this is true.  Yes, for now we wish it were manifestly true that the righteous were always flourishing in ways that made wicked and craven people sick to their stomachs.  But that is not always a snapshot of everyday reality.  Yet Psalm 112 is right to pull back history’s curtain a bit to show us what is going on behind the scenes and all the good things God will ultimately bring about in this world and in the full in-breaking of his holy Kingdom.

Believing that is cause for hope—hope that it is true as verse 4 says, that even in the darkness, the righteous can find the dawning of a new light.  And in the end this is the light of God’s incarnate Word.  A light that shines in the darkness, as John 1 says, but that the darkness cannot put out.

Illustration Idea

There is a moment in John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath where someone, I think it is the character of Ma Joad, makes a keen observation.  When you have a need, she says, don’t go to rich folks for help because they won’t give you anything.  No, if it’s help you want, go to poor folks.  They don’t have much but they’ll help you out from whatever they have and with whatever they can spare.  And they’ll do it every time.

Somehow that is a sentiment that sounds a lot like some of the facets to the righteous described by Psalm 112.