Psalm 124
“On Our Side”
August 9, 2020
As if the humiliation of the one-piece gym uniform that we all had to wear, which for many of us didn’t get laundered nearly as often as it should have weren’t enough, middle school phys. ed. class was always a lesson in embarrassment due to one’s non-athleticism. Sides would be picked and I always remember usually being chosen somewhere in the middle of the pack and feeling really bad for the girls who would be chosen last.
By high school, things improved a bit when teams for volleyball, field hockey or relay races were usually chosen by counting off 1-2-1-2, directed by our gym teacher whose name, I kid you not, was Candy B. Sweet. This was a fairer way but there were always the few real athletes with competitive spirits who would groan as they realized who would be on their team.
We have divided our world into sides but maybe that comes from a still lingering attachment to the idea that winning is everything and most of us don’t want to be on the losing team. Here the Psalmist is proclaiming that the victory of their nation in battle must be God’s doing, offering that victory in the face of their enemies up to God. This psalm also attributes their deliverance from natural disasters to signal that God is on their side.
Whose side is God on? Democrats or Republicans? Conservatives or Liberals? Protestants or every other faith or non-faith? Pro-choice or Anti-abortion? The rich or the poor? Would God ever side with the folks with a disability or a disease? Is God on our side only in victory or is God also on our side when we lose?
With so much going on – the Coronavirus pandemic, the economic downturn and struggle so many folks are experiencing and the deep divide between so many within this nation and around the world – we may be left feeling the need to take a side. Since we are good and loving people God must be on that side. Maybe we could look to this Psalm writer and rather than using the specifics of this Psalm to address every situation throughout all of history and our lives, we can recognize that having God on our side does not mean everything is going to go our way. So often God has sided with the victims in Biblical history. Certainly, many would have proclaimed Jesus a loser and yet his resurrection revealed that God is on everyone’s side – sinners and saints, winners and so-called losers alike.
The saving power of God is so clearly spelled out here. That’s the powerful message for us. What is God doing in our lives? When did you feel as if at the edge of a cliff, your world taking a dive and somehow, some way, you were pulled back from the edge and are now here?
Verse 8 of this Psalm is saying we alone cannot create our own lives and our future. We need help. We are each other’s help. If we believe that God is present with us not to take sides but to be our help we, in turn, must be the help others need. Are we ready to take the side of those without help? If we agree that our help comes from God, what are we to do with that help? How will we share grace, just as we have been given grace?
Anne Lamott often says, “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.” If God doesn’t take sides, then we must acknowledge that God, as the Rev. Traci Blackmon offers, “is not partisan or patriotic or preferential.” This means that “God is on the side of Righteousness, of Justice.” (https://www.ucc.org/commentary_whose_side_is_god_on_11162016)
This is a Psalm of those who have experienced hard times and have leaned into the strength and power of God to get through those times, recognizing that such perseverance in the face of adversity would not be possible without God.
I know I need to spend less time reassuring myself that I am right on so many issues and more time serving God’s people without needing to be on the winning team.
President Lincoln’s Second Inauguration took place as the deadly Civil War was drawing to a close and he anticipated having 4 years to bridge the deep divide that had killed more than 620,000 soldiers. As he stood on the steps of the Capitol in Washington in front of a crowd of 35,000 people in 1865, including both Black and White Americans, he started the work of bringing the two sides together with these words:
“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”
All of this side taking will not necessarily further the work of God we are called to take up. Earlier when one of Lincoln’s allies congratulated him on choosing to be on the Union side, the one that God is on in the Civil War, he famously responded:
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”
Let us keep striving to be on God’s side, the side of love and mercy and grace and forgiveness and hope for “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Alleluia and amen.