September 19, 2021- Psalm 54
Psalm 54
God is Our Helper
Lectionary 25B – September 19, 2021
First Lutheran Church, Winnipeg, MB
Psalm 54, like many of the Psalms, has a very passionate tone.
This is a passionate cry to God.
The cry is passionate because, as the Psalmist says, his very life is threatened.
Older translations used the word “soul” instead of life.
“Tyrants seek my soul.”
But really the word here is “nephesh,” a Hebrew word that is very powerful.
Nephesh is the totality of your being, it is all of you, your whole self,
body, mind, spirit, heart and soul.
Everything that makes you, you.
That is what is threatened here – the writer’s very being: “Tyrants seek my life.”
As in many of the Psalms, we don’t know exactly what the threat is.
Who or what are the tyrants? We don’t really know.
It is left vague, perhaps purposely.
I just want to get you into the heart of this Psalm’s feeling.
When has your very being been threatened?
Some of us have had our actual physical lives threatened,
for some of us have in fact experienced extreme political violence.
But many others of us have never faced that particular kind of threat to our selves.
However, other powerful forces that threaten the things that make us, us are many.
Grief, for instance.
When the death of someone you love – a spouse, a parent, a child – makes you feel as if
you will never be the same again, as if you will never be the person you used to be;
if you have experienced this, you have experienced a threat to your life to your being.
Job loss can also do this – can make you feel as if you are no longer you,
and will never be again.
Addiction, experiences of racism, as well as mental and physical illness can give rise to the exact same feelings.
These things can rob us of who we really feel ourselves to be.
These things threaten our life, our nephesh.
These things threaten what makes you, you.
I feel very much as if the pandemic and its restrictions have done the same thing.
It has threatened our sense of who we are in its disruption of our regular patterns of living,
our regular patterns of relationships, and our sense of how things ought to be.
Yes: we have asked, rightly, “Will the world ever be the same again?”
But I think underlying that question is a question we have all felt the force of:
“Will I ever be the same again?”
These many forces that rob us of ourselves the writer names “the enemy.”
These forces are the things the writer rails against.
These forces are things the writer seeks help against.
And so the writer, rightly, turns to God.
For God, in the Old Testament, is The Helper.
In fact, if the Psalm has one central theme it is that God is The Helper – literally.
For the writer has carefully placed the word “Helper” at the exact centre of the Psalm:
in Hebrew, there are as many words before it as after it.
The writer is trying to tell us: this is the central affirmation of my faith.
God is my Helper.
Helper is an interesting word in the Old Testament.
It is almost always used for God.
But way back in Genesis 2, when the first earth creature is lonely,
and God declares it is not good for the earth creature to be alone,
what does God decide is needed?
A Helper who is on an equal footing.
So there would be two instead of one.
So there would be two to help, support, encourage and care for one another.
The same word is used of the human helper as for the divine helper.
God’s help, it turns out, is mediated through human help.
God is not the only Helper – indeed, when the writer names God helper,
he immediately adds, “God is among those who uphold my life, my nephesh.”
In this way, we are created in the image of God, the Helper.
We are created to help each other, to serve, enhance, enrich and support each other.
Helping is God’s purpose, and helping is our purpose.
Sometimes, though, we do not help each other,
and then I suppose it could be said that we become enemies to one another.
The writer of the Psalm is passionate about those he names “enemies,”
those who do not help him but threaten him, that seek his “life,” his nephesh.
It is sad when humans are enemies to one another, and not helpers.
This is clearly not what the Creator intends.
But there are other enemies as well to God’s intentions for us, like those named above.
There are many forces that seek to undo the beauty of God’s creation,
and many things that seek to undo the beauty of a human being.
Well, thanks to the beauty of one particular human being – Jesus –
we know what the antidote to enemies is.
We know what the antidote is to all those forces that defy God’s intentions.
The antidote is love.
Jesus has a very simply prescription: love your enemies, he says.
God, it turns out, does not really have enemies the way we conceive of them.
The Lutheran pastor and theologian Martin Niemoller, who endured many tragedies in World War II,
famously said:
It took me a long time to realise that God is not the enemy of my enemies.
God is not even the enemy of God’s enemies.
God is The Helper.
God is love and God knows it is love that will save the world.
It is love that will set the world right.
It is love that turns the heart of those set against us.
And it is love that turns the world from illness to health, from war to peace,
from injustice to justice.
Love is what a helper does.
I have found throughout the pandemic that the love I have received and
the love I have given have kept me grounded in who I am and what I am about.
It is love that has kept me, me.
It is love – above all Divine Love – that defines my life and who I am:
which is a beloved child of God.
With great wisdom, the writer of Psalm 54 leaves God to deal with the perceived enemies.
God will repay my enemies, says the writer. God will put an end to them.
Well, maybe God will, and maybe God won’t.
And maybe God will simply do these things in God’s own way.
The God revealed in Jesus will likely repay evil with good.
The God revealed in Jesus will in this way put an end to evil ways.
For God’s ways, thank goodness, are not our ways.
All we need to know, and all we need to stake our lives on, is that God is our Helper.
We can call on God for help. For that is who God is.
And we can call on one another for help. For that is what we are for.
It is love that makes us, us.
It is love that makes First Lutheran Church, First Lutheran Church.
Tyrants, enemies and vast forces may seek to take and undo our lives –
but our loving God is among those who uphold our lives.
We have many Helpers in making us, us – human and divine.
So let us give thanks, for as the Psalmist concludes, God is good. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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