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Note: You can also find Matt's Weekly Devotional on our website.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

O Lord, who may abide in your tent?

Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,

and speak the truth from their heart;

who do not slander with their tongue,

and do no evil to their friends,

nor take up a reproach against their neighbors;

in whose eyes the wicked are despised,

but who honor those who fear the Lord;

who stand by their oath even to their hurt;

who do not lend money at interest,

and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved. –– Psalm 15


It’s like a lame group icebreaker that is over as soon as it begins. The host or moderator names a category, and if you don’t fit the category, you step outside the circle. The last person left in the circle is declared the winner. Who was born in the U.S? Two people step aside. Who was born in North Carolina? Six people move outside the circle, or in the case of our congregation, over half of you head for the exits. You get the idea. By the time the moderator asks –– Who can read Sanskrit? –– no one is left in the circle. 


However, let the psalmist be the moderator and nobody even gets to the circle. O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right… I’m out! Didn’t make the cut. I don’t even get to hang around to be embarrassed by the slandering tongue disqualification. At least I won’t be there when it comes time to confess to friends the wrongs I have committed at their expense. Of course, in a banking city like Charlotte, there is some serious sweating going on among many when the moderator gets to the whole lending at interest imbroglio. 


The psalmist’s expectations for the worshiper do not make for a tall order, but create a mountain impossible to scale. So, why publish a standard no one can meet? Is it set out as a goal to work toward, or is it a creative way to make it known that no one is righteous before God? I don’t know, but I do not think the list is set out as a means to qualify, but as a sign of what the presence of God begins to make possible through the active and continuing work of God’s Spirit. Scholar James L. Mays said, “The psalm is liturgy, not law. It is not a text for some sort of judicial procedure to exclude the unqualified; rather, it is the rehearsal of a purpose and a possibility.” The Spirit of God is “the power that makes this kind of person possible.” (Psalms, James L. Mays)


The prophet Isaiah hints at this empowerment as he proclaims the word of the Lord to the heirs of Abraham –– “You whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off!’; do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” God desires the relationship with you to the extent that qualifications are irrelevant, for God equips the ill-equipped, making the Psalmist’s list a template of possibility instead of a harbinger of exclusion. So, with the author of Hebrews, we pray –– “May the God of peace … equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.”

Grace and Peace,

Matt  


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