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    Tuesday, October 29, 2024

    Psalm 110

    1The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

    2The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your foes.

    3Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day you lead your forces on the holy mountains. From the womb of the morning, like dew, your youth will come to you.

    4The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

    5The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

    6He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter heads over the wide earth.

    7He will drink from the stream by the path; therefore he will lift up his head.

     

    I have been much taken in the past week by Eugene Peterson’s analysis of Psalm 110, which seems to have been the favorite of early Christians.

    It may be inevitable that the problems of a broken world will distract us daily, pulling our eyes off God’s benevolence and love. The psalm pulls us back again and again.

    Some years ago, Peterson was visiting friends in Montana, and he was moved daily by the Rocky Mountain vista that greeted him anew each morning. Just a few miles across the valley from their farm, mountains soared 7,000 feet toward the heavens, offering a view of a splendid, jagged border. As the sun moved across the sky, the panorama shifted in varying shades of blue and green.

    “What a marvelous setting for your work,” he said. “But I suppose that you are so used to it that you don’t even see it anymore.”

    His friends told him, to the contrary, they were caught breathless several times each day as the beauty unfolded with ever-new magnificence.

    Familiarity may breed contempt, Peterson said, so reminders are needed. “The Lord says… The Lord has sworn…”

    The early Christians prayed this psalm again and again because they, like us, were surrounded by would-be saviors, miracle mongers, and messiahs with blueprints for the salvation of the world. Bewildering confusion. Who can make sense of the political and ideological arguments in which we find ourselves. Where can we turn to sort out the promises, claims, and arguments which seem inevitably to only add to the ocean of despair that pervades our world?

    “This was the world into which Jesus of Nazareth was born,” Peterson wrote. “Poor, powerless, and obscure, he was a most implausible messiah. Than God spoke,

    The Lord says to my lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

    “A king came into being, one who brings order, beauty, justice, peace. God spoke again.”

    The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind…

    “A priest was formed, one who puts persons into a whole relationship with God. God spoke the king-priest Messiah into being, just as he had spoken creation into being. The birth, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth collected and shaped all the scattered materials of truth and revelation into a recognizable, organic, personal event – a stunning act of redemption.” (Earth and Altar, 45.)

    I believe the world’s very serious problems in this moment are not economic, political, technological, or ideological. Economies, rulers, scientific advancement, and systems of powers and principalities come and go. Like we humans, those God-given creations are broken. They too need salvation. They can’t save us.

    Only God can.

     

    Hymn of the day: Hymn of Heaven. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

     

    Rev. Lawrence Keeler