When my grandfather was dying and my family gathered around the hospital bed, I read aloud Psalm 139. Grandad was a saint in our lives - tender, benevolent and wise. He was patient and peaceful.
So I read this psalm, which is a prayer of praise and wonder for God, who so lovingly creates and cares for His people.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me, you know when I sit down and when I rise up… such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”
“Where shall I go from your spirit? If I ascend to heaven or if I lie in the depths, you are there. If I say that the darkness will cover me, even the darkness is not dark to you.”
“You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, which I know very well.”
These words about our loving God speak as well to what is best in human beings and human love - generosity, care, steadfast compassion. They were good words to hear as we commended my Grandad to God, his heavenly father.
But if you actually know this psalm, you may be asking, “Wait - at the hospital bed, did he read the whole thing? Did Pastor Rob read the whole psalm?”
Ah. Thank you for this excellent question, and no, I did not. Because after all the tender and peaceful language enumerating the glory and goodness of God with open-hearted, magnanimous awe, the psalm concludes with this person, this supplicant, whoever is praying this prayer, asking God to kill his enemies.
“Oh that you would kill the wicked, O God… those that speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up for evil… I hate them with a perfect hatred.”
I did not read that part standing at my grandad’s hospital bed. It wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to say as we blessed him in his dying.
But I don’t want to pretend that’s not part of the psalm, this dramatic turn from love and wonderment to hatred and vengeance. Because there’s something in there about you and me and all people, who know how to hold many things in our hearts, so that no matter the bliss and affection in one moment, bitterness and viciousness are always at hand.
Is that moment in the psalm even a turn? Is it actually a pivot? Or do we imagine that God’s wrath for the people we hate is just like our wrath for the people we hate, and call it one more sign of God’s glory? Add it to the list?
Maybe, maybe not. But at the least, it’s essential for us to consider how these things dwell together within each of us - the love for tenderness, care and creativity alongside a longing for perfect brutality that will solve the problem of our enemies.
Both these impulses belong to us, and we do choose where to focus our attention. To what we will dedicate our time, our energy, our life? Let’s not be coy - while both the love of creation and the hatred of the enemy exist within the human spirit, they do not live in harmony.
You cannot devote yourself to one without neglecting the other.
And we mustn’t be deceived about the fruits of our devotion. Anyone who has ever held a baby knows that love recreates itself. The more you love, the more love you have to give. It’s God’s paradoxical math that shouldn’t work but it does. And the more you love, the more those you have loved are blessed to love in turn. Love grows, it multiplies. We know this.
But we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that hate works differently. We think that if we hate correctly we’ll end all this hate that is plaguing the world. Hurt the right person in the right way and our problems will be solved. Kill the one at the center of all the evil we lament, and things will finally be ok again. The right violence toward the right target will end all this violence.
Let’s disabuse ourselves of this falsehood, and know that malevolence wants to increase and expand just like love, but it works faster, because things are destroyed more expeditiously than they can be lovingly and mindfully built. Choose what you wish to tend in the garden, and don’t be surprised when it grows.
I wonder sometimes how the psalmist would have reacted, if right when he prayed, “God, will you please kill the people I hate?” a voice immediately and audibly came from heaven, saying, “No.”
I picture a Monty Python scene where the guy is stunned, then perturbed, crosses his arms and huffs, ‘bullocks.’ (I often conjur ridiculous images and laugh, to prevent myself from going insane within calamitous reality.)
But the psalmists does actually conclude his prayer with more wisdom than that. He writes:
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
He probably doesn’t think that God would reject his desire to smite his foes. But he does at least say that he wants to follow God’s ways, not have God follow his ways. This is the most important thing for you and I to hold close today, if we want to be lovers in a hateful world, peacemakers in a time of violence.
God bless you, friends.
Pastor Rob Leveridge
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