Biblical scholar Ched Myers writes of the prominence of immigrants in the Scriptures.
Torah and the Prophets warned Israel not to discriminate against economic or political refugees, since in YHWH’s eyes even the chosen people were “but aliens and tenants” (Leviticus 25:23). Instead, they were to treat the “sojourners in your midst” with dignity and justice (Deuteronomy 24:14). This fundamental regard for the resident alien, and call to solidarity with the “outsider,” came to full realization in the teaching and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. An oft-cited verse that captures this is Matthew’s last-judgment parable, in which Jesus commends those who welcome him in the guise of a stranger—and condemns those who do not (Matthew 25:35–46). [1]
Three archetypally vulnerable groups are commonly named in almost formulaic fashion: widows, orphans, and strangers. Because YHWH “watches over” them (Psalm 146:9), they have intrinsic rights to sustenance (Deuteronomy 14:29, 24:19–21, 26:12–13) and to human rights (Deuteronomy 27:19; Psalm 94:6). And the prophets measure the health of the nation by how widows, orphans, and strangers are treated (Jeremiah 7:6, 22:3; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5)….
But there is another, theologically startling characteristic of scripture: from beginning to end, God too is portrayed entering our world in the guise of a stranger in need of hospitality. One of the first divine epiphanies is YHWH’s mysterious appearance in the form of “three guests” (Genesis 18:1–8). Abraham and Sarah offer them food, drink, and shelter, and their hospitality occasions the great promise of progeny that launches the salvation story of an entire people (Genesis 18:9–10)….
We can go further: the God of the Bible is consistently portrayed as “stateless,” and we can reasonably add undocumented. This is in stark contrast to the patron-gods of the empires that surrounded Israel, who lived comfortably in the temples of the king. In the Exodus tradition, the wilderness God doesn’t even have a name, much less “papers”: the moniker YHWH means “I will be whoever I will be” (Exodus 3:14). God’s voice summons Moses into a conspiracy for freedom from a burning bush outside the borders of, and in opposition to, Pharaoh’s political and economic system. Inspired and led by this God, the Hebrews flee Egypt “in haste” (Exodus 12:33), and wander in the desert as a people with no legal status—as political refugees still must do.
The Gospel writers portray Jesus as a refugee in need of hospitality:
The Second Testament continues in this tradition. The gospel story begins with Jesus’ family fleeing violence as political refugees, pushed around Palestine by the imperial forces of Caesar and Herod (Matthew 2; Luke 2). The adult Jesus not only characterizes himself as homeless (“the Human One has nowhere to lay his head,” Luke 9:58), but stateless. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he says before the Roman procurator (John 18:36). The evangelists also portray Jesus as a constant recipient of hospitality who sometimes even “invites himself in” (see, for example, Luke 19:5).
a mirrored fun house of confirmation bias
a sermon on Psalm 27
| NADIA BOLZ-WEBER MAR 17 |
Spite
This might be weird for a pastor to admit, but I did not always love the Psalms – I mean the 23rd psalm is cool… he maketh me to lie down in green pastures sounds relaxing and all…but most of the Psalms have a poetic structure that is different to Western verse, and the imagery can feel archaic and aggressive even. I mean, have you heard psalm 109, it is for sure the most spiteful thing I’ve ever read.
In case you haven’t memorized 109, here are the requests made of God by the Psalmist:
May his enemy’s children be wandering beggars;
and be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all his enemy has
May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
And for a long time I thought, dude…that’s a bit harsh don’t you think. Like maybe the Psalmist hadn’t done his personal work.
That is the discomforting thing about the Psalms. They do not hold back. The intimacy the writer felt with God is the kind where you don’t have to soften anything you’re saying or feeling. The words are unfiltered and real in a way that makes me shift in my chair. Clearly the Psalms weren’t run through a PR department before being published.
Now I love that about the Psalms – how relatable they are – maybe not materially, I’m still not clear what bulwarks and ramparts are, but for sure I relate emotionally. Because eventually I realized the reason the Psalms made me uncomfortable wasn’t because I couldn’t relate, but because I could.
My kind of spirituality
Like in our Psalm for today when the Psalmist is like, the Lord is my light and my salvation who’s a guy to fear. I sort of wonder if maybe the Psalmist wrote that in a good moment like maybe right after savasana, then maybe as they come back from yoga class it all just sort of falls apart like it does for me. Gets angry at the driver who cut them off, then gets a collection notice for a bill he knows he paid, and is pretty sure his neighbor is not cleaning up after his dog, and someone has gone after a promotion at work that they thought was for sure theirs. And then he sees a picture of his best friend and his ex-wife on Facebook and his best friend just sent a text that says, “we need to talk”
And then maybe he writes the rest of the verses of Psalm 27 because then it’s a whole lot of evildoers, and foes and enemies and everyone has it out for the guy.
This, by the way, is my sort of spirituality. Very lumpy and inconsistent, filled with praise of God but with little sprinkles of doubt and wanting my enemies destroyed on top.
I have no way of knowing if the Psalmist was a tiny bit paranoid, or prone to drama or if people really did hate the guy that much.
False witness
But I do know what it is like to have had untrue things said about me. To feel that powerless and alone. In fact 6 years ago I was the subject of a fake news story and for a moment I was like, yeah, may a creditor seize all that guy’s assets.
I also know what it’s like to have said things about other people that I later found out were not true. Which is its own kind of awful.
Anyhow, I’ve been obsessed all week by verses 12 and 13 in our Psalm for today and how oddly paired they are.
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
I love this little encapsulation of what it’s really like to be us down here.
You seem like nice people so I’m not sure how many of you would say that you have enemies and adversaries, but if you do not, and if no one has spread falsities about you, and so you are struggling to find a way to relate to the Psalmist, I am here today to argue that in this moment in time specifically, Psalm 27 is still very relatable, and here’s why.
A mirrored fun house of confirmation bias
Yesterday when a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video and when it was over I was shown that grid of all the videos that YouTube was suggesting and for just a second I thought “Wow, I didn’t realize so many other people are interested in shape note singing, the coast to coast walk in UK, Genx Feminists, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,”…but they aren’t – the algorithm was just showing me what I already think and what I already like and it makes it seem like everyone else does too… when really everyone else is just shown their own weird preferences and beliefs back at them too.
And all the news sources I prefer kind of do the exact same thing. Feed me everything through the filter of my opinions till it seems like it’s the real thing.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it feels like the machinery of late stage capitalism coughed up the internet for us with its empty promises of connecting us all through social media – only to leave us in a mirrored fun house of confirmation bias.
I feel so surrounded by it that it’s suffocating and I’m left wondering what is real….and what is true when there are such starkly different narratives out there about the world that are then custom delivered to our devices to assure us that we are right about everything.
“content”
All that is to say, maybe the thing we have all been surrounded by these last 20 years is false witness. I just don’t know what else to call the misinformation, and disinformation, and spin and slant and fabrications and propaganda we benignly call “content”.
False witness might seem like an archaic term, but false witness is just the way we call everything anything but what it is.
And it’s just so … effective.
I mean, convincing us of the very worst things about the world and other people and our own bodies is very very profitable, just not to us. It does not profit us.
So when the Psalmist writes,
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.
Maybe it IS relatable because false witness has risen against us all and I ask, has it not breathed out violence into this already fragile world?
Which is why – which is why – in the very next verse, when the Psalmist says.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
It feels so defiantly hopeful.
As if their head rose above the grimy threats and lies and slander to see that this is not the land of the forlorn, this is not the land of the competing world views, this is not the dystopian land of enemies.
It is the land of the living. And to speak of the goodness of God in land of the living is to speak Good News to we who are in bondage to fake news.
The most real
And you know where we see the Goodness of God? We only see it in what is most real. The algorithms will not show it to us. We see the Goodness of God in what is most real. Not in a virtual reality headset, not on cable news, not in mediated content, not in an imagined utopian future, but here and now in the land of the living.
Here we are friends. Even so, even still, even though. Here we are in the land of the living.
Where we see the goodness of God in what is most real. To be clear, the Psalmist doesn’t claim that a life with God is trouble free, only that God is a source of strength in times of trouble (and trouble does and will come for us all). That too is real.
By the way, we also see the Goodness of God in what is most real, most honest, and most -makes-us-shift-in-our chair about ourselves.
And the Psalms are our help in this –expressing the unmediated truth of our innermost thoughts; all the spite and praise and hope and paranoia and gladness, showing us that all of it is fair game for God. Which means we need not fear the real truth about ourselves when that is where God resides. When that is where God offers us mercy and lovingkindness and as many fresh starts as we need.
So may our eyes be unclouded by what is false so that we can behold what is good. Maybe this is what the season of Lent can bring to us. Divine lens cleaner. That we might better see the world, better see ourselves, better see our fellows and better see the goodness of the Lord right here in the lumpy, beautiful, heartbreaking hilarious land of the living.
Amen.
Know someone who would dig this?
