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Thy Kingdom Come Psalm 146

Praise the Lord! So begins and ends the last five . Praise the Lord! Or in

Hebrew – ! – praise. U – us. Jah – Yahweh or Lord. Let us praise the Lord!

Psalm 145 concludes with “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name.”1 The last five Psalms do just that. ‘Praise the Lord!’ they sing. Progressively they build reaching cosmic proportions in the last Psalm, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!”2 All creation – not just people – is called to praise God. That is a lot of praising!

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

What picture comes to mind when you hear those words? People singing ‘praise’ songs with the same words cycling over and over again? People waving their hands in the air? Other openly demonstrative spontaneous responses? Certainly, those are forms of praise. But if that is solely what is meant by ‘praise’, some of us will be most uncomfortable, even left out. I know that I am just not that exuberant or unrestrained. Yet ‘praise the Lord’ is so liberally sprinkled throughout not only the Psalms but all of Scripture, it can be concluded that this is no empty phrase but a mandate to all. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Praise, according to the dictionary, means to express approval or satisfaction. That’s a lightweight definition for ‘praise the Lord’, wouldn’t you say? The Hebrew meaning is much fuller and richer – glorify, act madly, shine. Quite a few notches above a taciturn ‘nice job, God’.

The Psalmist sings, “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” Our souls are the center of our life force, the ground of our existence that makes us the wonderfully unique creations we are with the

1 : 21. NRSV. Unless otherwise noted, scripture references are from Psalm 146. 2 : 6 NRSV 2

remarkable gift of associating with that which is beyond us. The soul lifts us from being merely sentient beings to intimate interconnectedness with the divine.

Short of singing praise songs all day long, how does one praise God? Especially with such a full-hearted enthusiasm that emanates from our very core of being? One of the latter

Psalms, this 146th is thought to be written in the period after the Babylonian exile, about 500 years after David was King and 500 years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. The people did not have much reason to praise. The nations of and Judah no longer existed; they were under the control of the Persian Empire. There were no more kings. The priesthood was in disarray. Even worse, the Temple had been destroyed. A remnant of God’s people was back in

Jerusalem, but most were scattered like leaves after an autumn wind. No, there was not a lot of impetus to praise God for anything.

In the ancient world – and today as well – the rulers of a people, be it a country or organization of any kind, set the tone for life in that particular community. Rulers of Biblical times, however, had a special position, a God-given responsibility to provide a place and environment in which the people of the kingdom could live and flourish, a place where all people were safe and nurtured. The track records of both political and faith leaders in Israel and Judah were abysmal in that regard. Repeatedly, the people had been disappointed. Their freedom and dignity became well-trampled doormats. Poor, ones considered unclean, foreigners – all lived at the whimsy of the powerful. “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals in whom there is no help.” As they straggled back from exile and tried to rebuild, as they recalled their own history, no one needed to tell them that.

The kings of Israel and Judah were quite a varied lot and decidedly mortal. Though there were outstanding kings such as David, Hezekiah, and Josiah, the majority of kings of Israel and

Judah had time and time again led them on paths to chaos and destruction. Manasseh was one of those kings. He reigned shortly after the time of Solomon, David’s son. In his time as ruler 3

he reintroduced the worship of more than one god, building altars to Baal and Asherah. In a rite of sacrifice to the god Molech, he gave his own son. “He did what was evil in the sight of the

Lord.”3 That phrase is repeated throughout I and II Kings, which chronicle the kings of Israel and Judah. Ahab, Jehoshaphat, Ahaz, Amon – the list of kings who did evil is much longer than the kings who followed God. But even the ones that history recalled as good, could they be trusted? Not really. In the end, they all died, they all left. And not a single one lived up to the promise of God’s kingdom.

In this country we are revving up for what could prove to be one of the more interesting election seasons of our history. There are presidential candidates in abundance! Well-known folks like , , , , . Others not quite as familiar such as Martin Hahn, Jill Stein, and , who has run for president every four years since 1988. Not a perfect one in the lot! Is there anyone in the vast field of candidates you would fully trust? “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals in whom there is no help.”

We cannot depend on our leaders, so what do we do? What about the promises God has made to us? Can we even trust God? The Psalmist does not leave us floundering in a sea of cynical despair but leads us back to God as the source of life. “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God…” Help as a consistently reliable life- giving presence, hope as the reason for living. Certainly, leaders have and will continue to let us down. All people are predictably unpredictable. But God is a firm and certain presence, a rock in the midst of transience and inconsistency. We have heard that message for thousands of years, haven’t we? Like simply saying ‘praise the Lord’ is merely an expression, talk about the God of help and hope is just that – talk. The Psalmist – and God – knew that a disillusioned people weary of being disappointed time and time again needed more. They needed to know

3 II Kings 2: 2 4

beyond all doubt that this God of creation was there for them. They needed to be able to make the connection from the God worthy of all praise to the realities of living.

Echoing the familiar cries of the prophets and the law of Moses, the Psalmist proceeded to give substance and shape to praise: justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, help for the downtrodden, protection for the vulnerable. Praise is not at all about what we say or sing but about who we are, how we live, who we are with the most vulnerable of our world. When Jesus began his ministry, he went to the synagogue in

Nazareth and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.4

In Jesus Christ humanity began to see a ruler and a kingdom of a different sort, one that was known by its grace and compassion, one that was grounded in God’s love, one that was rooted in the actions of the people not the rulers of the land. We cannot trust in princes or any other mortal, but we can trust in God and God’s promise come alive in Jesus of Nazareth. Through him we come to know God. Through him we learn how to live with one another. Through him we learn that to praise God is to live in ways that reflect God’s loving grace to all. We, not rulers or laws, become the way by which God speaks. In our thoughts, words, and actions, we become the way by which God becomes known in the world. That is our praise – our lives themselves as mirrors of God.

Each week as part of the prayers of the people we pray the ancient words of the Lord’s

Prayer. Each week we say, ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ It

4 : 18-19 (mirroring : 1-2) 5

is not a request that God swoop in from on high and make God’s kingdom happen. Instead it is a petition acknowledging our own agency in making God’s kingdom a reality here on this earth as well as in the next life. ‘Thy kingdom come’ – a plea for the knowledge and courage to live out a kingdom in which God is known through how we interact with the most fragile among us – the sick, the poor, the lonely, the rejected, the oppressed. That is our praise.

But that is not the way our world flows, is it? We hear so much talk about how the poor need to work harder, the sick should have taken better care of themselves, the lonely need to get out more, the rejected should not have done whatever it was they did to make them so rejectable, the oppressed are just part of life, foreigners should go back home because they don’t belong here. That is not the way of God. If we engage in activities that promote social justice, that teach compassion for others, we are often given disparaging labels and scorned ourselves. And we have learned the hard way that we cannot depend on our leadership to make God’s justice and care for the fragile a reality in our world. It must come from us as individuals, as the Church. It will not make us popular; in fact, we will be decidedly unpopular.

Yet we must dare to live in praise of God so that the kingdom is here, now at this moment.

When John was in prison, he heard news of Jesus of Nazareth and his ministry. His own ministry had been centered on the One who was to come, the One who would be the

Messiah to save all Israel. Was the Messiah to be found in Jesus? He sent word to Jesus asking, ‘is it you, really you, are you the Son of God?’. Jesus answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”5 That is still how we know God is here – when those who are so vulnerable and powerless, those whose lives seem to have no hope, those whom others ignore and even try to defeat, when they as the most

5 Matthew 11: 4 NRSV 6

fragile among us are treated with dignity and compassion, it is then we know God is here. Our actions and interactions do carry the weight of pointing ourselves and others, especially others, to God. Praise without such action is not praise at all.

How can we make this a reality for us? How do we, individually and collectively, begin to live in the way of justice and compassion? One person at a time, one action at a time, one cause at a time. Thank God we are not walking this road alone. We have one another, and

God is with us. As Joshua prepared to lead the people into the Promised Land after slavery in

Egypt and forty years of wandering in the desert, God spoke to him words to share with the apprehensive people: “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the

Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”6 We are moving toward a new land, a new kingdom, one in which we praise God through our living.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;….. The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and widow…. This Lord will reign forever, Your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! .

Melodie Long United Presbyterian Church Sackets Harbor, New York August 30, 2015

6 Joshua 1: 9 NRSV