Song for a Nation
Serving nation is like serving God.
Psalm 72:1-7, 16-19
Rev. John H. Hice
November 8, 2015
Royal Oak First United Methodist Church, Royal Oak, Michigan
Power
Jesus is at the high-point. Triumphal entry into the holy, capitol city, palm branches
waiving, people chanting in full voice like a political convention, “Hosanna! Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
It’s a moment of power. Election Day: looking like a landslide.
And then it’s Thursday and time for a meal when this same Lord is expected to
break Passover bread like a king – but he gets up from the table taking towel and basin
like a servant – and washes his followers feet like a servant. “See: if anyone would be
great, she’s got to serve. The greatest must be servant to all.” Power is to give away: it
is to empower others so they may truly live.
Not what you’d expect to see. Compare it to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Scottish
general who epitomizes the more expected value of ambition. When Macbeth hears just
one omen that he’ll be king it goes to his head.
Entitled.
Just one prophecy and he thinks it gives him license to slay his cousin the king…and
then anyone else who gets in his way.1
That’s the extreme we sometimes see in people who come into power and nations
that come into prominence. They think it’s all about them.
When children play king or queen of the hill one reaches the top and has to keep
pushing all the rest of the kids down. It’s like that: leadership reduced to the simple
dynamic of supremacy and oppression.
That’s the problem with power politics.
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Becoming God’s Realm
It’s silly to assume Ancient Israel didn’t see their share of it. King Saul’s jealousy of
young David is example of enough that there was plenty of treachery and plenty of
entitlement among God’s Holy nation from the start. But even so 72, chief of the Royal
Psalms, paints an ideal the world had likely never seen.
This is what Israel’s king is supposed to be like: a leader serving God instead of self. A
leader who stands to protect people – especially the most vulnerable of them; those who
don’t have the resources or the strength to protect or provide for themselves.
Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
It’s not about the one in power. It’s about the One to whom the nation and the world
really belongs. 72 makes it clear: the king’s purpose is to enact God’s reign.2
You might have already noticed that 72 doesn’t make a much of a case for the strict
separation of church and state. It was a prayer to be sung on the day a new king was to be
crowned. It was like an inauguration when the whole nation was intent on praying for the
new leader. There’s a good chance that 72 was written for Solomon, himself; and used
again for generations of Israel’s and Judah’s kings that followed.
It was a prayer seeking God’s blessing for a new monarch and at the same time it was
a challenge to the young king to be the kind of leader God expected.
Establish justice and righteousness: protect the weak and care for the poor. Do
everything you can to bring prosperity to everyone in the kingdom and everyone in the
world.
The quest is not old-fashioned. Yes, ours is a government of laws and not of people;
and yes, we live in a society which does not favor one faith or creed over another. Yet we
live in a society established on the understanding that a Power greater than all of us has
granted each person inalienable rights. Just like ancient Israel imagined. And we have
pursued a policy in which we have expected the governments of the world will ensure the
human rights of its people: just like 72 says we should.
Separated from creeds, free of domination from a particular religion and prevented
from endorsing any particular faith: we still end up living out the expectations of 72. Not
only are our leaders bound to be public servants; but so are we. All of us together.
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Laying Down Life
Which leads me to point again to the people we honor today. People who sacrificed
years of their lives to protect homeland and open the way of liberty and justice for people
far and near. Men and women who have put themselves in the place of protecting the
public peace, even when targeted because of the indiscretions of a few. EMT’s and
firefighters who race to the suffering or in peril when fire or trauma strikes.
At their best (which for the most part has been their usual) – these have been the ones
who have shown us faithful leadership for today.
Role models for our leaders. Examples for the lot of us.
These are the ones who have shown us what 72 calls all of us to do: pick up our bowls
and towels …and serve.
1
Shakespeare, William, Macbeth. Circa 1610.
McCann, J. Clinton Jr., “Psalms,” The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. IV. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Copyright © 1996. p 964.
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