With Open Hands--September 21, 2023

With Open Hands--September 21, 2023

"A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.  Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and shield. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you." [Psalm 33:16-22]

It's about more than just a warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach--hope, that is.  Hope that is rooted in the steadfast love of God changes our posture toward the world: it opens us up to see others as also beloved of God, rather than as threats to be fended off.

That's a connection we need to hold onto here in this psalm, because to be truthful, it's really easy to treat "hope" as a pleasant feeling, but nothing else. It's easy for "hope" to be merely an emotional pick-me-up that carries no direction to it, like it's no more than a spiritual sugar rush.  But the voice of this poet in what we call the Thirty-Third Psalm says that hope has a certain trajectory to it.  Hope--at least when we are talking about hope that is grounded in God's love--will lead me to be less combative and more secure in my beloved-ness.  It will make us less fearful and defensive, and instead it will give us the courage to risk putting ourselves out there.  Hope that arises from God's love will loosen my clenched fist or my grip on a weapon, and instead will lead me to open my hands (and my heart and my door) to neighbors.  That's so much more than a feeling--it is a literally disarming change of perspective that affects my whole way of seeing the whole world.

And honestly, it's pretty counter-cultural stuff, too.  I've got to tell you, I get brought up short every time I read this passage (and others like it in the Scriptures), because the psalmist makes such a clear connection between hoping in a loving God and not putting our trust in the weapons of war or the tools of violence.  The poet rattles off the typical arsenal of his day--a big army, great strength, and the military technology of the day (substitute "war horse" with "tanks" or "drones" and you get the same sense)--and he dismisses all of them as ultimately unworthy and impotent.  They cannot save.  They cannot deliver.  They cannot guarantee victory.  The tools of warfare are simply not worth putting our trust in, according to the psalmist... but God is.  

In an era like the psalmist's time, that had to have been a scandalous thing to say; it is no less scandalous in our time!    Surely the poet here is not naive or unaware of the dangers out there in the world; surely he's heard the stories about the fearsome Philistines or seen the formations of the ravaging Assyrians.  Surely he knows how destructive the Babylonians are famed to be, and knows the legends of Pharaoh and his ferocious chariots chasing the newly-freed Israelites toward the Red Sea.  And for that matter, the psalmist has surely seen kings and their commanders use the might of their own armies to take territory from their neighbors or repel an invading force.  And yet--for all of the presence of the ancient military-industrial complex there in the ancient poet's awareness, he is convinced that hoping in God will point us away from warfare and weapons.  Instead, by hoping in God, we find we are made confident apart from our ability to hurt, threaten, or bully someone else, and without the need always to have a bigger stick that then next person.  We can face the world, even knowing there are scary things and powerful dangers in it, but without constantly needing to rely on a sword, a spear, or war horse (or their modern counterparts) to feel secure.  We don't have to keep giving our allegiance to the ways of violence because we hope in a God of steadfast love who insists on getting the last word, even beyond the power of death.

And when I take that seriously, it changes the way I encounter a world full of strangers.  I don't have to be naive, but neither do I have to see everyone who crosses my path as a threat.  I don't have to see every problem as a fight to be won but will recognize what turn out to be conflicts to be resolved or challenges to be worked out together.  I don't have to see everything as a zero-sum game where your success must mean my defeat, but will instead see how much of my well-being is bound up in your own ability to thrive as well alongside me.

This is all powerful, even radical stuff, and it's all there just shouting to us from the pages of the Scriptures.  Here is an ancient poet saying that the more he puts his hope in the God who loves faithfully, the more clearly he realizes that having more weapons won't make him any safer or feel anymore secure.  In a time like ours when we are constantly sold fear (and then sold the things people want us to believe will quiet those very fears), the psalmist points us in a different direction, beyond warm fuzzy feelings, to the trajectory of hope.  

Today it's worth asking ourselves, if we are going to put our hope in the steadfast love of God as well, what will that lead us to let go of our grip on?  And who will we be free to embrace now with open hands?

Lord God, as we place our hope in your faithful love, teach us what we can let go of with these clenched fists and souls of ours.