The psalmist is sitting in exile in Babylon. He, together with thousands of others Judeans, had been violently wrenched from the destroyed cities and towns of Judah by the imperial monarch of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar 600 years before Christ. They had lost not only their land, but their capital city of Jerusalem where God's temple sat in its magnificence. The holy temple was the place where God's presence was most palpable; it was the place centered in the hearts and minds of the people as the joyful expression of the conviction that they were God's people, chosen and precious to him; it was the assurance that God steadfastly stood by them through the vicissitudes of life; it was the place they could go up to and offer their sacrifice, present their petitions, shout aloud their songs of praise and thanksgiving; it was the place they could repair to when life turned sour; there they could seek the Lord when they were assaulted by disease, afflicted by a foe, or laid low by the misfortunes of life.
It is no wonder then that the book of psalms is filled with such praise for the temple as God's house and expresses the longing to be there to encounter his steadfast love and mercy. Just a few verses later in our psalm we read of the sense of the tremendous loss of God's presence and the fervent desire to stand in the courts of the Lord:
"Oh, send out thy light and thy truth; let them lead me, let them bring me to thy holy hill and to they dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise thee with the lyre, O God, my God."
Or again in Psalm 48 another psalmists declares his wonder and awe for the temple as the locus of God's presence in the world,
"Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion . . . the city of the great king. Within her citadels God has shown himself a sure defense."
The temple was no mere symbol, as we would say today, but it was a concrete expression of God's certain presence with his people assuring them of the gracious favor he bore for them, assuring them of his abiding presence, vouchsafing to them his ever-present protection which held them, like the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, in his everlasting arms.
Thus it is that we can understand the deeply disturbing and painful experience of the loss of this holy house. The temple lay in ruins and with its destruction the very underpinnings of life for God's people was laid waste. How could they exist in this world without his undergirding presence that gave life purpose, meaning and direction? Their very faith seemed to lie with the temple in ashes. It seemed they were abandoned, cast out now into the world without any sure foothold. They had become strangers and aliens in the world which seemed to have overwhelmed them with its terror. And this terror is exacerbated by the life that is now lived in a foreign land far removed from the central seal of their faith. The terror of their alienation was exacerbated by the taunts of their foreign oppressors who called into question their life together with the living God of Israel beside whom there is no other. So our psalmist cries out,
"Vindicate me, Oh God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from deceitful and unjust men, deliver me!"
Is this not a cry that seethes in the hearts of many today? It is so because we live in an age of terror. The earth's crust moves and tens of thousands die from the destruction of a tidal wave that washes away home, land and loved ones. Churchmen with quaking hearts rise up and are quoted in the media saying the very existence of God has been called into question. Quite apart from the rather faithless character of this response they did give voice to many people whose own hearts were appalled and dismayed by the incredible devastation wrought by this natural force which seemed to be so malevolent.
We live in an age of terror. Men possessed by hatred blow themselves up and indiscriminately take thousands of innocent lives of men, women and children.
We live in an age of terror. Brutal and malignant dictators maliciously oppress their people by state sponsored terrorism in order to control their hearts and minds.
We live in an age of terror. Our Jewish brothers and sisters have experienced as a people the most horrendous attack against a people in the history of the human race. They still suffer under terrible prejudices in many countries of the world today. And most of the nations of the Middle East bear a grim hostility toward this ancient people of God declaring their joy at the prospect of the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
We live in an age of terror. Christians throughout the world daily suffer for the faith. More Christians have been martyred for their faith in the last hundred years than during the previous 19 centuries of the Church's existence. Christian churches are attacked and razed to the ground. Christians themselves are enslaved, beaten, persecuted, and driven from their homes and the world is silent. To become a Christian in some countries is to forfeit your life.
Our age is an age of terror which has thrown the hearts of millions into dismay. My wife said recently she grew up believing the world was a friendly and good place but now it no longer appears to be so. The world now appears to be hostile territory where evil runs amok and satanic forces have seized control of the hearts and minds of men. The response of many is to abandon faith in God or any power beyond us to which we are responsible and accountable. Many today seek refuge in possessions, or by running after ever new ways to be entertained and distracted, or become abject servants to work and jobs in order to achieve a living status that they hope will satisfy the gnawing emptiness in their lives. Many people turn to drugs, alcohol, food or a surfeit of sexual stimulation to insulate themselves from our anxious world. We live, many are convinced, in an empty universe and are an abandoned lot who must use our own autonomous and self-sufficient powers to create the world in our own image or at least create private worlds that are insulated from the threatening perils of our post-modern existence. And then, as if to insure their alienation in an empty universe, our post-modern culture drives out of consciousness and public discourse and expression any reference to the divine.
How different the response of our psalmist! Even as his faith is taunted as being vain and futile in the face of the ruin of the house of God and of God's own apparent defeat, he, in his God-lostness, turns to his God, refusing faithlessness and cries out for God to vindicate him and his people. He holds fast to the promise that was made to the people through the prophet Moses:
"For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, and there is none remaining, bond or free." (Deuteronomy 32:36)
This vindication he calls for is not one of his own making conjured up by his own reason and sense but is based on the promise of God. The cry comes out of powerlessness and defeat, out of lostness and abandonment, out of acknowledging that he and his people have reached the end of the rope and there is none to save but God alone. He rests on the promise that God would vindicate his people. His faith holds to the word proclaimed to the people from time immemorial, which had taken root in their hearts and to which they clung through all the vicissitudes of their journey through life in this world.
God's vindication is his compassion for his people. He does not abandon. His presence may seem to be obscured, his purposes an enigma, his deepest will past human scrutiny but his will for his people is clear: it is his burning compassion for his people. He will defend their cause and right though his vindication may lie beyond the present horizon and only be realized in the future. The future is in God's hands even if the present seems to deny his sway. So the psalmist then being swept up in the surety of God's vindication finally sings at the end of his psalm:
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise hm, my help and my God."
Hope in God! This is not a hope in terms of wishful thinking, a sort of whistling in the dark as our psalmist passes through the valley of the shadow of death. It is the confident insight that he rests in the arms of a gracious Father God; it is the confident foresight that this compassionate Holy One of Israel will restore his people and they shall again sing his praise in a restored land and temple. With this confidence and faith he can boldly face his anxieties and uncertainties; he can boldly take himself in hand and declare in effect, that he has no right to these soul shaking emotions because his past, present and future are held securely in the gracious and loving hands of the Almighty One in whom all losses are swallowed up to be restored in his final victorious reign.
That victory of God over the threatening disasters of this world and all the terror that man can conceive and perpetrate were given a death blow by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In him the hope of the psalmist is finally and ultimately truly vindicated! His hope in God finds its true fulfillment as the Lord of history, the God who is enthroned on the praises of Israel (Ps 22:3) enters our history in the person of his Son Jesus Christ in whom he takes upon himself all the suffering and losses of this world, all of its terrors, all of its threatening perils. In Christ he enters our losses, our defeats, our griefs and sorrow. In Christ God bows his head and enters the dark gates of persecution, suffering and death. Becoming subject to them he is overcome by them. He takes on all the defeats of the world and they defeat him. The world thought it had destroyed this new temple of God. But God raised it up again in three days. True to his compassion, true to his holiness, true to his promises, true to his faithfulness to his creation, true to his love for mankind, his creation, he bursts the bonds of terror, death, destruction and evil and rises from the grave. Jesus Christ is God's victory over this world. He is our victory over the world. He is our confidence and salvation. He is the new temple of God in whom God dwells and the concrete expression of God's gracious presence in the world. He is the one in whom we can sing along with the psalmists: "Oh, send out they light and they trust; let them lead me . . . to thy temple!"
Our lives are stories of losses. Three years ago our neighbor's son lost his life in the destruction of the twin towers in New York City. One of his fingers was all the workers at ground zero were able to return to his grieving mother and father. The relatives, friends and mourners packed the large church where his memorial service was held. This young man left behind a pregnant wife and a son whom he never would see. His wife's father spoke the eulogy before the Mass began. He spoke from his heart with words that touched the souls of all in attendance. He recounted with affection and eloquence how his son-in-law had been folded into the circle of the family and the joy they experienced together and in anticipation of the birth of a new life into the world. Here was no hate, or rancor or berating of life, the world or our nation's enemies. Here was a quiet faith and confidence in Jesus Christ as the one who bears with us the crosses we must bear.
Our losses are not always as traumatic and severe as the experiences of this grieving family or that of our psalmist but, none the less, still losses: children grow up and leave the family nest, there are changes in our health, friends or relatives are taken from us, our world seems to change at an ever quickening pace and the familiar patterns we were used to are no more. We are tempted either to ignore the grieving movements of our hearts nurturing anger and resentment or place the fault for our uneasiness in the world, which, at its best, is a realm of injustice. Our world is filled with hate and rancor as we come to grips with the terrors of the 21st century. Our text calls us to renewal of faith and sets us into fellowship with the God of history who does not leave us desolate. The psalmist is no autonomous individual struggling heroically by himself. He is part of the people of God just as we are. We have entered into the new temple of the Body of Christ, we are enfolded into the Body of Jesus Christ and in that community of faith we bear one another's burdens. In the Church of Christ we are nourished by his Word of the Gospel and the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Joined with one another to Jesus Christ we do not escape the traumas of life but they are all swallowed up in the victory of his cross and resurrection so that we sing: "Oh, send out thy light and thy truth and let them lead me . . . to thy holy hill and thy dwelling." Amen! It shall be so!
Carl E. Roemer
2232 Jacob's Ladder Road
Becket, Massachusetts 01223
carleroemer@wmconnect.com