The traveller has come home. It is once again possible to engage life.
Recall an occasion when you experienced some trouble. Ask God to be with you. Share the anxiety with God. Recall a current trouble. Share the anxiety with God. Rest in God’s presence. Now thank God for sharing with you and supporting you.
Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? …
Those who have clean hands and a pure heart.
even after fifteen-hundred years, it is moving to stand in the area of Tara in County Meath in Ireland, and to realize that the palace of the high king once stood here overlooking the surrounding plain. In those days our eyes would have gazed out over a vast forest. The person who stood here long ago held power over everything he could see.
The psalmist gives us a similar image of God. But this time we are looking not over a small island kingdom, but across the planet. We are celebrating infinite power.
The psalmist now asks the question, “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord?” How can we experience the presence of God? What serves us best, if we would feel the power of God in our lives? The reply brings us up short. Power as our society thinks of it has no bearing on this matter. When asked to imagine who can stand on the high place with God, we instinctively think of human beings larger than life—powerful, courageous, strong, invulnerable. But our images are swept away as utterly mistaken.
We are given a markedly different set of standards for those who would be the companions of God. “Clean hands and a pure heart … not pledged … to falsehood [or] fraud.” We are being told that the criteria necessary for a relationship with God are essentially moral.
To extend these criteria into the realm of society is very much in keeping with the world of the psalms, where personal and communal life are constantly being linked. We live at a time when Western society as a whole is wrestling with the problem of morality, both public and private. On what grounds can moral stances be justified, especially in an increasingly plural society? “Who can stand?” asks the psalmist. Our question is rather, “On what can we stand?”
If we as a society are to “receive a blessing from the Lord”—to become a desirable, peaceful, and just society in which human beings can live creatively and happily—we know that we must find some acceptable moral ground. Without this we will weaken. But with it we will be powerful in the truest and most lasting sense.
Are there some issues of social morality that concern you? Recall how Jesus responded to moral issues. Consider his teachings— Two Great Commandments, Sermon on the Mount, Lord’s Prayer, Parables. Ask God to guide your discernment and compassion.
Protect my life and deliver me;
let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you.
anyone who has the least experience of counselling others knows that it usually takes some time for a person to confide the real agenda they bring to an encounter. There are exceptions, of course. There are times when someone will sit down and pour out what they must share. But most of us will talk first about less intense things, and move only gradually to the real agenda.
The psalmist meets us in this way. At first his topics are safe and unthreatening. “My God, I put my trust in you … teach me your paths.” But there are hints that other matters are not so easy to mention. “Let me not be humiliated … let the treacherous be disappointed.” Now we hear a little more about his relationship with God, his certainty of God’s “compassion and love.”
Once again he switches theme; this time he refers to “the sins of my youth.” But quickly he veers away from this troubling subject and returns to praising God. “Gracious and upright is the Lord … All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness.” Suddenly there is an intense appeal. “O Lord, forgive my sin, for it is great.” This is followed, as we have come to expect, by more a fervent reflection on God as friend and guide.
Now comes the full flood of the psalmist’s suffering. He is “alone and in misery. The sorrows of [his] heart have increased.” Again we hear the word “misery.” He has enemies. “They bear a violent hatred against me.” This time his thoughts about God are very far from calm reflection, and there is a naked appeal for help. “Protect my life … let me not be put to shame … my hope has been in you.”
The gift of the psalms to us is their honesty about human nature. This one example shows clearly why the whole Book of Psalms has become precious in our heritage. In this psalm the pretending, the struggle to face certain realities, the defences erected before suddenly tumbling down—all are well known to us. We have all known such struggle before finally confessing the truth to ourselves, often finding this truth extremely difficult to face.
Our prayer for such times is that we have One to turn to, of whom we can say, “My hope has been in you … deliver me … for I have trusted in you.”
We can all remember when, because of some perceived fault, we have felt despondent and unworthy. The Book of Genesis says we are made in the image of God. St. Paul speaks of the Christ within. Ask God to help you realize the divine goodness in you.
My foot stands on level ground;
in the full assembly I will bless the Lord.
I recall a senior executive once saying to me that, at certain times during worship in her parish church, she would become aware of her professional world and of its dissimilarity from the world in which she was standing. Sometimes she wondered if she could continue to bridge these two worlds. She was sure that she could not function without a community of faith and worship to turn to.
To some extent, I think we meet that person in this psalm. In the mind of the psalmist two worlds seem to be clashing. There is an indication that he is preparing to go to the temple for worship. “I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, that I may go in procession round your altar.” Is there a note of wistfulness as he sees himself, “singing aloud … and recounting all [God’s] wonderful deeds”? Perhaps there is a note of longing in the line, “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell.”
This wistfulness and longing may arise from the way that images of the house and presence of God are suddenly juxtaposed with invading images of a brutal world. In the teeth of this world the psalmist is trying to hold on to the things he values. The opening verses have a kind of dogged determination about them, as if by naming certain things he will keep them secure in his life. “I have lived with integrity … your love is before my eyes … I have walked faithfully with you.”
Immediately his thoughts are invaded by “the worthless … the deceitful … the evildoers.” Does he fear that he must take these people into consideration if he is to survive in their kind of world? But he forces these troubling images from his mind, and returns to “the house in which you [Lord] dwell.” He seems to run to the temple for sanctuary.
Once more dark images pursue him. He fears being swept away with “sinners … those who thirst for blood … Whose hands are full of evil plots … full of bribes.” In desperation he again cries out the determined words he voiced at the beginning of the psalm: “I will live with integrity.”
But