Psalm 103
Robert M Watkins
This psalm is a hymn of praise to the redeeming Lord. It sings of God’s favor for the Least of These. It sets humility as the foundation for righteousness, declaring that if one remembers one’s place before God, then the fullness of God’s grace and mercy will be realized in one’s life.
Here is a cure for what ails some of us as we pass through the holidays. The glitz and the glitter get to be overwhelming. The sensory overload is simply too much. One of my neighbors, God bless him, annually mounts a sound and light show that I know Google Earth satellites can see from space. There is not a square inch of his home’s exterior that is not festooned with some form of neon light–not the traditional colored or white twinkling globes for him–nope, these are Klieg lights to make the rock group KISS blush! Then he wired the roof with speakers blaring Christmas music–again, not carols or “Frosty” for him, but some sort of prog rock blast-a-thon Christmas. The rest of us are left huddling in a closet, pleading for mercy by December 3!
But this psalm brings us home.
The opening thought is praise of God because God is gracious and forgiving. God redeems us from sin–sin here is anything that separates us from God; i.e., sin is not simply transgressions against commandments–sin is not necessarily a moral issue, but rather is always a relational one. God seeks to eradicate all that keeps us from dwelling in the full presence of God, therefore, illness, despair, loneliness, need, brokenness, and so on are met by God’s judgment, not to condemn us, but to liberate us to sing, dance, and rejoice in God’s favor. God is praised because God always seeks the maintenance of God’s relationship to God’s people.
What wondrous good news this word is! The child born of Mary comes to save us from ourselves. I thought of that this week as once again the harried, hurried, and harassed of the season come to light in the movie, “Christmas with the Kranks,” John Grisham’s couple who momentarily seek to free themselves of the season, until their grown daughter destroys their rebellion by coming home unannounced with her finace! We laugh because it tells the truth–all of us at one moment or another will lose it this season. We will break. Jesus and the legions of angels will flee from before us. We will be in the wilderness. It’s all right, declares Psalm 103. God will find us, God will bring us home, because that’s how God loves us.
The psalmist reminds the reader that God has always been a God vindication–redeeming the faithful from whatever breaks them down. All this can be seen through the prism of the Exodus, the psalm reminds us, wherein God revealed his omnipotent mercy–God refused to leave the children of Abraham in the bonds of slavery that robbed them of their lives.
A caveat, however, we cannot assume this mercy to be cheap grace–God continues to judge our disobedience and will continue to correct us–that is also a part of God’s redeeming love. It would not be love if it left us in a state alienated from the God who made us–libertarianism is not love. God is a true father to us, correcting us to preserve us; guiding us in the paths of justice and righteousness, calling us to heel when we wander from them. Finally, in God’s judgment, we also need to see God’s grace in the fact that God does not meet our disobedience with equal wrath. Herein is a text to warm Calvin’s heart–through our disobedience, we forfeit all rights to God’s grace, yet God is gracious to us. That is what defines grace as grace. Remember that, dear children, as mom opens a gift of dollar store potholders and dad unwraps a squeeze bottle of Rain-X while a plunder worthy of Croesus awaits you–I’m just saying…
Next, the psalm treads into what could be seen as bad news–human beings are impermanent. The psalmist makes a poetic analogy to wildflowers in a meadow–they rise and they fall in the passing of a season–a truly momentary existence. How far back can we name the generations of our own families–genealogists excluded? Slowly, the sands of time swallow us. In stark contrast, God is eternal. Therefore, God’s love is eternal. It knows no season. God loves each generation of humanity equally–they are all God’s children. Thus, it is our task to be sure that each generation knows of the eternal love of God, proclaiming the good news of God’s salvation so each generation will know the ways and means of faith, thereby staying within the fold of God’s steadfast love.
Here is the beauty and wonder of baptism of a child–we commit ourselves to living the story of our Immanuel, embodying Christ with us for each child we care for in our midst. We tell the story through our presence–words, action, and simple being–to each generation. So, what are we saying?
The psalm then ends with a resounding call to all levels of being to praise the Lord. The angels, God’s messengers, are to praise the Lord simply because they of all creatures should know the glorious works of God. The hosts of heaven–God’s servants–should praise the Lord, for they, too, know firsthand of God’s glorious power and work. All creation should bless the Lord because by simply taking stock in being a mighty act of God in and of themselves, they see and experience the glorious power of God. Finally, the psalmist calls on his own soul to bless the Lord, for in God there is solace, comfort, and hope because all that God does, God does in steadfast love. In that is a total living of the song of the angels Luke recalled.
So what does this psalm have to do with Christmas? I hope that by now that is rather obvious.
But if not…
In a sense, the psalm defines the whole Christ event whose advent we celebrate in Christmas. Christ is God’s embodiment of all that the psalm praises. In Christ, God ends the reign of sin in all of its forms. In Christ, God redeems all who are penitent seeking the mercy of God. A warning, though, is also proclaimed–Christ redeems, but there needs to come the step of penance–it is inescapable. The eternal love of God is fully revealed in Christ–hence, Luke records the songs of love–one in the angelic message to the shepherds, and, again, as Mary sings in her hymn of praise, the Magnificat, Christ is the embodiment of God’s lifting of the lowly, and, taken as a whole in his story, Luke tells of Christ as the redeeming steadfast love in telling the story of Mary, Bethlehem, shepherds, and angels–Christ is for the Least of These without question. More subtly, Matthew also reveals this truth in his nativity as the Christ stands in opposition to power as the world practices it. Christ is not abject power for power’s sake; Christ is power for love, redemption, and reconciliation. Christ will empty himself embodying the magi’s gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The eyes of faith will see that for what it is.
