Lectionary Reflection for Easter 7A on Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35

A NEW IMAGINATION

We have the world we have because we make the choices we make, and we live the way we live. If we want a different world, and I’m sure most, if not all, of us do, we will need to make different choices and live in different ways. But sometimes it can be hard to imagine a different life in a different world. It can be hard to choose differently when we can’t imagine what those different choices might be. When our relationships are stuck in divisive patterns, it can seem impossible to imagine a different way of relating, communicating, and arguing. When our children seem hellbent on following destructive paths, it can block our capacity to imagine that there may be positives mixed in with what we fear. When our jobs weigh us down and our finances never quite seem to cover our needs, our anxiety and depression can keep us from imagining a more sustainable life. And when megalomaniacal and narcissistic leaders pile injustice upon injustice, bringing polarisation, insecurity, instability, conflict, and violence on millions of human beings around the world, it can seem both naïve and pointless to try and imagine that the world could be different.

But if ever we needed our imaginations to be reignited by renewed hope, possibility, and creativity, it is now. Those who benefit from chaos, who use manufactured crises to cling to power, and who grow rich by investing in the machinery of conflict, do not want the general population to become imaginative. People with dreams, ideas, and plans are very difficult to control, and their imaginings can overthrow dictators. So, those in power sow instability and unpredictability, and they bombard us with insanity and injustice to overwhelm us and keep our minds occupied with basic survival. But now is not the time to stop dreaming. If ever there were a time to awaken our imaginations and begin to envision a different world and an alternative way of being, it is now. As Matthew Fox rightly declares, “Awakening imagination can arouse our creativity to solve problems and move our species to its next level of evolutionary development”.^¹

Walter Brueggemann famously called people of faith to learn from the Hebrew prophets the power of the ‘prophetic imagination’. But that prophetic imagination, that prophetic voice, is not only present in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is also present in the Psalms—and the Lectionary Psalm for Easter 7A (Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35) is certainly one of them. In times like these, it is common for us to seek the comfort and reassurance of God’s presence in the songbook of Israel. But we can also find the prophetic flame we need to transform our imaginations and move us into transformative action.²

Psalm 68 is one of the most difficult and complex psalms in the entire Psalter. But if we can get past the “challenging grammar, vocabulary, and syntax” and the “uniquely explicit depictions of God’s violence against the enemies”,³ we will find that there are three imaginative, hopeful, and motivating images to fire a renewed, prophetic imagination. And if we will allow those images to become icons through which we see our lives and world, we will release a new vision of the world that moves us, in our own small ways, to make new choices and live in new ways.

EVERY EMPIRE ULTIMATELY FALLS

Psalm 68 begins with strong images about how God deals with God’s enemies. For those of us who believe that Jesus revealed a non-violent God, these descriptions can be disturbing. It’s not surprising that the Lectionary leaves out verses 11-31, which describe God speaking about shattering the heads of God’s enemies and inviting God’s people to wash their feet in the blood while their dogs lap up their fill! It may well be that for the psalmist, these images were intended in a completely literal way, and they reveal exactly what the psalmist hoped God would do to the armies and peoples of other nations who had opposed, harmed, or oppressed Israel. In the faith and worldview of that time, these images were appropriate.

In the realm of Christian nationalism and dispensationalist fundamentalism, such a literal interpretation is not problematic at all, and it can comfortably be applied (as it has been in recent weeks) to justify human wars. But if we take Jesus’ revelation of God seriously, we can no longer view God’s justice and liberation as violent and limited only to some people. Our challenge, then, as we read the psalm, is to take God’s liberating acts seriously, while rejecting the temptation to transfer the military metaphors into literal acts of war in our time.⁴

We also need to be careful about how we define God’s enemies. When we divide our world into good and bad, sinner and saint, Christian and lost, us and them, it is all too easy to believe that God is on our side, and therefore our enemies are automatically God’s enemies. But as Anne Lamott’s friend, Tom the priest, so insightfully said, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”⁵ The Bible sometimes falls into this trap, but thankfully also offers us a far better way to understand the ‘spiritual warfare’ between God and evil.

In Ephesians 6:12, the writer reminds their audience: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (NRSV). As Richard Rohr writes, words like cosmic powers, present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, and others like powers, principalities, and thrones, which are used elsewhere in the New Testament, are likely pre-modern words for the political, military, economic, and religious structures and systems that control our contemporary world and demand our unquestioning allegiance.⁶

In Psalm 68, the Exodus is visibly in mind throughout the whole poem,⁷ and this reminds us that oppressive empires will always, ultimately, fall.⁸ But it also reveals that God’s enemies are not the Pharaohs who rule oppressive regimes or the Caesars who are worshipped as gods in the Roman Empire. These figureheads are just representatives of the systems of injustice and oppression that enslave. So, we do not fight the Caesars or Pharaohs of our time. We do not fight Trump, the Republicans, Netanyahu, Hamas, Putin, the billionaires, the drug lords, the warlords, or any other human being. We fight the systems that created them and that they represent. We do not fight our capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, homophobic neighbours, bosses, or family members. We fight the bigoted systems that they have been co-opted into. Even within ourselves, what we fight is the tendrils of empire that have found their way into our hearts from the moment we were born and that, through enculturation, have kept us in time with the beat of the empire’s drum.

It is not only global and political empires that are challenged in this psalm. It also confronts the smaller empires of crazy-making companions, manipulative friends, narcissistic neighbours, and power-hungry pastors. And the prophetic imagination it offers can be our inspiration to protest and vote against systems that make people into gods, and to boycott and expose those that seek to favour some while oppressing others. It is the vision that can keep us choosing kindness over cruelty, generosity over accumulation, hospitality over rejection, and love over hate. It is the collective memory that proclaims that every dictator, however large or small, will ultimately fall.