Trusting God’s Unbreakable Promise in a Fragile World
Trusting God’s Unbreakable Promise in a Fragile World The Rev. Bingham Powell Our psalm today, Psalm 146, is the first of a set of five psalms that finish out the psalter that we might call the Hallelujah Songs of Praise psalms. Why not just call them Songs of Praise without adding the word Hallelujah? It is because this set of psalms is unique in that each one begins and ends with the word Hallelujah. Otherwise, they are similar to other songs praise. They are cheery, they are upbeat, they offer praise to God for all the good things that God has done in this world. Our Psalm today starts the same way, Hallelujah. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. It is a beautiful introduction, a classic introduction to a psalm of praise. But then the psalmist does something a little different than usual. In the next verse the psalmist takes a darker turn and issues a warning: put not your trust in rulers nor in any child of earth for there is no help in them. When they breathe their last they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Put not your trust in rulers, some translations say put not your trust in princes. Put not your trust in political leaders or leaders of any kind for they are fallible humans who will disappoint you at some point. The psalmist is probably writing sometime during the exile, although it may be right after or right before or right in the middle, but either way the psalmist knows their history. The psalmist knows that for hundreds of years their rulers have failed them. The prophets tell us why: they stopped loving God and stopped loving their neighbor. They stopped loving God and stopped honoring the image of God in their neighbor. That was manifested in many ways: the worship of idols, the oppression of the widow and the orphan, injustices, greed, corruption. They were all fallible humans who failed the people. That doesn’t mean all the rulers were bad. There were some that were better than others, some who came along and realized things were not on the right path and tried to turn back and get the people to turn to God, but they also let the people down. They were fallible humans. Ultimately they didn’t go far enough, or they died and their project of reformation died with them. Put not your trust in rulers. In contrast, the psalmist wants us to put our trust in God, the God who made the heavens and the earth. While the rulers will all go down to the dust, this is the God who made the dust. That is more stable ground in which to put our trust. For while the rulers will let us down, we have a God who will not give in to injustice, and will love you and care for you and support you through it all. The psalmist knows from the prophets why the other rulers have failed them, so the psalmist chose a contrast with the God who is the exact opposite. Those rulers failed because they were not able to move the people toward God’s dream for this world, so the psalmist reminds us of that dream. We have a God who gives justice to those who are oppressed and food to those who hunger. The Lord who sets the prisoners free and opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord who lifts up those who are down, the Lord loves the righteous and cares for the stranger, which can be translated as sojourner or resident alien. The Lord sustains the orphan and the widow but frustrates the way of the wicked. We are to put our trust in this God with a dream for a world in which each person is made in God’s image and is given the full dignity and respect they deserve as the image bearer of God. The psalmist wrote these words twenty-five hundred years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years, but it is wisdom that resonates throughout the ages, wisdom that each generation discovers time and again, wisdom that resonates today and will continue to resonate in the future. Leaders will fail us. They are not where we are to put our hope or trust. Instead,