Mail Archive of the old Santa Clara Valley Lutheran Parish

Subject: belated devotion for the 13th

Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:48:57 -0700 (PDT)

From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>

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Subject: belated devotion for the 13th
From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>
To: SCVLP <scvlp@googlegroups.com>
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Psalm 110
The LORD says to my Lord:
  =93Sit at my right hand
Until I make your enemies
  a footstool for your feet.=94

It sounds like your usual sycophantic palace dribble.  The psalm
writer, wanting to curry favor from the king, or writing some public
liturgy for the king=92s enthronement or the day of war, declares that
God has set the King at his right hand and will subdue for him all the
nations around them:

The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion;
  you will rule in the midst of your enemies
Your troops will be willing
  on your day of battle

The LORD is at your right hand;
  he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
  and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.

Notice that by this point in the psalm it is now God who serves the
king, standing at his right hand, not the king who serves God.

And the King is not only a military leader, assigned by God to protect
the people and exercise justice, he has become high priest, an agent
of God, a mediator of divine favor and blessing:

The Lord has sworn
  and will not change his mind
=93You are a priest forever
  in the order of Melchizedek.=94

When the king is both Priest and King, who can question him?

In the eyes of the writer, the King shines with the radiance of the
morning sun and the young men of the nation stand before him
glistening like the dew.

Arrayed in holy majesty,
  from the womb of the dawn
  you will receive the dew of your youth.

This day as he marches out to battle is the dawn of creation.

Why is it scripture?  What makes this ancient =93Mission Accomplished=94
banner the Holy Word of God?  Because the kingship to which it points
is no longer one of the sons of David from the throne of Judea.

Jesus trumps his opponents by asking them =96 since this psalm is
recorded as having been written by David =96 of whom is David speaking
when he says that God spoke to his lord?

There is a king over David.  An anointed one whom David serves.  This
lord is the one whom God sets at his right hand.  This lord is the one
who will rule over his enemies.  This lord is the one the nation=92s
young men will willingly serve.  This lord is the one who will judge
the nations and cast down the rulers of this world.

It=92s hard to imagine that Jesus will =93pile up the dead.=94  It is not
hard to imagine, however, that in the day of judgment he will strike
down the armies that burn villages in the Sudan and raped women in
Bosnia, and filled the death camps in Poland and Siberia and Laos,
that marched the Armenians out into the desert to perish, the armies
of thugs that hold cities hostage in drug wars, who capture women and
sell them into sexual slavery, who kill a child=92s family and turn him
into a soldier, who dump toxins into a village water supply, who=85.

How else can you describe such judgment than the heaping up of
bodies?  The war is over.  The enemy slain.  The myriad demons that
plague humanity are crushed underfoot.  Satan is cast down and thrown
into the great pit.  Is it not grace for the victims of evil?  Is it
not warning to its perpetrators?

Let the text stand.  Let it speak its word of judgment and hope.
There is one who sits at God=92s right hand.  There is one who is a
priest forever.  There is one whose kingdom is not like the kingdoms
of this world.  One who will drink in peace from the brook at the side
of the road where the lion and lamb lie down together.

=93On the third day he rose again.  He ascended into heaven, and is
seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again to judge
the living and the dead.=94

And he rules now, even in the midst of his enemies.