Proper 19 / Pentecost 17 / Ordinary Time 24
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
Fools say in their hearts, "There is no God."
-- Psalm 14:1a
It helps add context to this psalm if you read it with the story of Israel's slavery in Egypt in mind. When the psalmist prayed, "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God,' " you can see him viewing the Egyptian society that seemed to enslave and oppress the Hebrews without any remorse. As a society, he could say, "They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good." In such a society that had no accountability to a God who transcended them, the people lacked the necessary impetus to do good when doing good required any sacrifice of personal comfort and security. The society was undergirded up by the free labor of the slaves and to suddenly set them free would cause an economic disruption costly to those who had benefited from this arrangement.
"They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one." When a society treats people like objects whose well-being is measured by their economic worth, then it can be said of them that the society eats up people like they eat bread (v. 4). The psalmist believed that we could not treat the poor and the needy in society with disdain or neglect without experiencing the terror of God who was the refuge of the weak (vv. 5-6; Matthew 25:31 ff). The psalmist's prayer was that deliverance would come out of Zion (v. 7), that people would look again to the source of God's revelation for a way out of the morass in which they found themselves.
The struggle for the church is how to witness to such a faith in an increasingly secular society in which people at many levels are treated like objects. The people are discarded by the economic machinery when they are no longer functional for the making of profit. If the fool, and the pragmatic wisdom of our economic machinery, says in his heart there is no God, how does the community of faith demonstrate by our lives that indeed God reigns?
-- Psalm 14:1a
It helps add context to this psalm if you read it with the story of Israel's slavery in Egypt in mind. When the psalmist prayed, "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God,' " you can see him viewing the Egyptian society that seemed to enslave and oppress the Hebrews without any remorse. As a society, he could say, "They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good." In such a society that had no accountability to a God who transcended them, the people lacked the necessary impetus to do good when doing good required any sacrifice of personal comfort and security. The society was undergirded up by the free labor of the slaves and to suddenly set them free would cause an economic disruption costly to those who had benefited from this arrangement.
"They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one." When a society treats people like objects whose well-being is measured by their economic worth, then it can be said of them that the society eats up people like they eat bread (v. 4). The psalmist believed that we could not treat the poor and the needy in society with disdain or neglect without experiencing the terror of God who was the refuge of the weak (vv. 5-6; Matthew 25:31 ff). The psalmist's prayer was that deliverance would come out of Zion (v. 7), that people would look again to the source of God's revelation for a way out of the morass in which they found themselves.
The struggle for the church is how to witness to such a faith in an increasingly secular society in which people at many levels are treated like objects. The people are discarded by the economic machinery when they are no longer functional for the making of profit. If the fool, and the pragmatic wisdom of our economic machinery, says in his heart there is no God, how does the community of faith demonstrate by our lives that indeed God reigns?
