WRATH AND MERCY

From an Advent Bible Study Series on THE PSALMS

by

The Rev’d Fr. Michael Shier, SSC

If you look for Psalm 58 in the Canadian BCP 1962, you will not find it nor half of Psalm 137. Removed from that edition. Was this wise? More recently, scripture has been much more radically savaged, and we now say: Put it back and leave it alone. What you don’t understand in this generation, the next generation will. God is always bringing new light from his word.

Our Lord himself used the psalms extensively. He applied them to himself and his circumstances. When we say the psalms it is HIM talking. We should be reverend. These are his words.

What then about some of the more notorious words: Psalm 58: Let death come hastily upon them and let them go down quick into hell? Let them consume away as a snail? Let his habitation be void and no man to dwell in their tents? Or Ps. 137, v. 9: Blessed is he that taketh thy children and dasheth them against a stone? Could Our Lord ever have said such things?

We can’t. They encourage malice. But could someone without sin say these things? Could Our Lord say them? For the fact is there is divine punishment and chastisement. There is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And people do consume away and children are dashed to pieces or at least blown to pieces and you either say that God disapproves of such things but is powerless to stop them - an explanation that never occurred to the psalmist who believed that God is almighty. Or else you say that these things are permitted by God as part of vengeance upon sin. It is, however, divine and not human vengeance. You are not trying to get your own back. You are not allowed to help the divine vengeance with a bit of private enterprise. There is a lesson here. Very few of us are really content to leave the avenging of slights, insults and injuries in the divine hands.

We also assume too eagerly that we are among the righteous and that our enemies are the enemies of God. This was a characteristic of early Hebrew religion. For the moment their enemies seemed to triumph, not realising that they were taking on not only the Israelites but their God as well. The Israelites were not dismayed at this temporary impotence. They held up their hands with a confident patience, most irritating to their enemies, for all the while they knew that hot coals of fire and burning thunderbolts were piling up over their enemies heads. The day would come when the whole thunderstorm would be discharged, the day of the Lord when vengeance would be wreaked. It would be the day of justification and we would see then who were the righteous and who the unrighteous.

This was all very comforting until Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel came along and blew a hole in it. The great question they drove home was this: Would Israel on the day of the Lord be found among the justified righteous? Would they not rather be found on the other side? Woe unto you who desire the Day of the Lord. It is darkness and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned against a wall and a serpent bit him.

The prophets did not abolish divine vengeance. They brought it home more forcefully. For now only the really righteous man could speak those curses and know that they would not come home to roost on him. And where was there such a righteous man?

Let us look at another group of psalm verses. Those with a strong conviction of sin. Who can tell how oft he offendeth? O cleanse thou me from my secret faults. My wickednesses are gone over my head and are like a sore burden too heavy for me to bear. Behold I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.

Same old problem. How could Our Lord say these words? He who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth? Well the answer is in the servant songs in Isaiah. They concern a future figure who will be without sin and yet who will be numbered among the sinners. We know that this is Jesus the Christ and we know that Jesus knew it too. He not only takes human nature upon him. He takes human sin upon himself too. He never committed it yet he bears the burden of its guilt. He didn’t do it but he is guilty of it.

Nonsense, you say. You can’t be guilty of what you haven’t done. Well, let’s think about that. Young people who commit horrible and shameful crimes sometimes do so because they have been badly brought up. But it is not always so. It is possible for a youth to commit a cruel and horrifying obscenity without the parents being at fault at all. His father and mother are not responsible. They had no share in causing this. The calm and objective judge will acquit them entirely. Therefore they do not share the guilt?

Ah, well, that depends on how much they love their children and how closely bound they are. Ordinary normal parents are in fact bound to their children with a love so intense that it often takes them by surprise.

Of course they share the guilt, the shame, the sorrow. Of course they wish the ground would swallow them up. You can tell them they need not feel guilty. They are not responsible. But to them that is simply idle chatter. That kind of responsibility is irrelevant. They can only get rid of their guilt by casting their child out of their hearts as an unclean thing. And that they can’t and won’t do.

Oh, I know. You tell me the parents are not really guilty. They just feel guilty. It isn’t a distinction that scripture recognises. Guilt is the uncleanness that inhibits frank and open communion with God. Guilt is something that you feel. If you don’t feel it, it is because you are avoiding God. Bring the sinner face to face with God and he will feel it at once.

So we share the guilt of others - we become guilty together with them - according to the measure that we love them and quite irrespective of whether or not we have shared in the sinful act.

Jesus, because he loves the whole human race with a love that passes understanding, because he is bound up with his brethren and won’t be separated from them, bears the guilt of the sins of the whole world: not as someone nobly taking responsibility for something he hasn’t done, but because he feels the uncleanness and shame and alienation of it penetrating his whole being. As though the sin was not only his but Him. St. Paul says it. Him who knew no sin, he made to be sin on our behalf...

This is why Our Lord can say: My wickednesses are gone over my head. They are like a sore burden too heavy for me to bear.

So then, we have two lots of psalms: there are psalms from the period when Israel never doubted her righteousness. And there psalms which beg for mercy on sinners. Is this a contradiction? No, because Our Lord can say both. He both numbers himself among sinners and he calls down vengeance upon sinners. In fact, he is the only person who dare say both. And we only dare say them if we are found in Him.