Third Monday of Advent
Reflection: Monday, Day 16 of Advent
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
(Psalm 110:1, read the entire Psalm below)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. (Psalm 22:1-2 read verses 3–24 of the Psalm below)
I’ve heard it said that the Book of Psalms played a central role in shaping Jesus’ self-understanding, which makes sense—they were Israel’s song and prayer book, and therefore one of the primary ways the Jews worshipped God. Jesus and his followers constantly cite psalms to explain how his actions fulfill Scripture; how he, as the Son of David, is also the fulfillment of David’s writings. Not only Jesus, but every thoughtful and faithful Jew, would have turned the Psalms over in his mind and heart continually, both as they gathered for religious services and as they individually went about their business from day to day. They are the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures.
When you meditate on Scripture for long enough, you discover new truths and beauties inherent in the text, as well as new contradictions which may at first seem unresolvable. In the first three gospels, Jesus asks his audience a riddle about Psalm 110, which begins, “The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” By Jesus’ time, this is already understood as a prophecy of the Christ (Greek for “Messiah”), who will be a great ruler from David’s line, a restorer of David’s kingdom. But Jesus asks, “If the Messiah is David’s son, why does he call him his lord?” Traditionally, of course, it is the descendant (or son) who honors his ancestor (or father), not the other way around.
The answer to Jesus’ riddle—as we now know—is that the Messiah is not merely David’s son and heir, but God the Son himself, who shares David’s mortality to overturn death and establish an endless kingdom. This psalm is important to the Church’s understanding of Christ as well—particularly the idea that he is seated at the right hand of God, interceding for us. It is repeated by Peter in his first sermon in Acts 2, to explain why the Holy Spirit has been poured out (because Christ has ascended to the Father and is sitting at his right hand), as well as by the writer of Hebrews, to establish that Christ is greater than angels.
I suspect that this verse also helped inspire Jesus’ teachings about loving and forgiving our enemies. We can afford to be patient with obstacles as well as people who hate and betray us, for God will subject them (and all things, even us) to Christ. The comfort provided to the Church (and for that matter, to David) was not mere enlightened detachment—the Psalms are many things, but they are never detached. And neither is Jesus. Rather, they are a continual attempt to reconcile the promises of God—that he will place our enemies under Christ’s feet—with their apparent contradiction in the world around us. So many of the Psalms are records of heartbreak and anger in the midst of betrayal in a world where, in the words of another psalm taken up by St. Paul, “We do not yet see all things put under his feet.” Life, too, is filled with contradictions that seem unresolvable.
“When you meditate on Scripture for long enough, you discover new truths and beauties inherent in the text, as well as new contradictions which may at first seem unresolvable.“
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Crucifixion of Jesus. The image of Christ on the Cross is an icon, not only of God’s love, but of our world’s decisive rejection of that love. As he dies there in agony, his mind turns again to the Psalms, and some of Christ’s last words are the first words of Psalm 22. The Psalms were not numbered in those days but rather referred to by their first line. When you named them, you’d say, “Blessed is the man that does not walk” instead of saying “Psalm 1,” or “The Lord is my shepherd” instead of “Psalm 23.” Some scholars have argued, therefore, that Jesus did not actually believe the Father had forsaken him at all. Rather, he was signaling to his hearers that he was fulfilling the Psalms even in his death. Crying out “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani,” (the Aramaic translation of the Psalm’s first line) thus signals that he is, even in his death, fulfilling the prophecies of David and trying to help his hearers recognize that fact. I am sure it matters whether Christ believed himself to actually be forsaken by God, but I am also sure that I am not capable of settling that question. Whatever is going on behind Christ’s words, he is clearly using the framework of the Psalm to “read” his own experience and interpret it for his community. Through it, Jesus and the Church are given words that allow them to come to terms with rejection and failure—the unfulfilled nature of God’s world—even as they themselves fulfill it.
Advent
Activities
Try to memorize a Psalm, or even a few verses from a Psalm. One way to do it is to write the first letter of each word and look at this to jog your memory.
- Once you have memorized a verse, pray it, asking God’s guidance as you apply it to different contexts in your own life and even to world events that concern you.
- Listen for insights from God and write these down. It’s a bit like breathing.
Taken from the daily office
Daily Scripture & Prayer
Psalm 110 (ESV)
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
The Lord sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Your people will offer themselves freely
on the day of your power,
in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
the dew of your youth will be yours.
The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord is at your right hand;
he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgment among the nations,
filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs
over the wide earth.
He will drink from the brook by the way;
therefore he will lift up his head.
Psalm 22 (ESV)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
“He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.
Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet–
I can count all my bones– they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!
I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.
Literature
“PSALM. XXII.
Deus, Deus, meus,” by Mary Sidney
1. MY God, my God, why hast Thou me forsaken?
Woe me, from me why is Thy presence taken,
So fair from seing myne unhealthfull eyes;
So far from hearing to my roaring cryes?
2. O God, my God, I cry while day appeareth,
But, God, Thy eare my crying never heareth:
O God, the night in moane to Thee I spend,
Yet to my plaint Thou dost no audience lend.
3. But Thou art holy, and dost hold Thy dwelling
Where Israel Thy lawdes are ever telling;
Our fathers still to Thee their trust did beare,
They trusted, and by Thee deliver’d were.
4. They were set free when they vpon Thee called;
They hop’d on Thee, and they were not appalled.
But I a worm, and not of mankind am;
Nay, shame of men, the people’s scorning game.
5. The lookers now at me, poore wretch, be mocking,
With mowes and nodds they stand about me flocking:
Let God help him, say they, whom He did trust;
Let God saue him in whom was all his lust.
6. And yet even from the womb Thy self did take me:
At mother’s breasts Thou didst good hope betake me:
No sooner my child eyes could look abroad
Than I was given to Thee, my Lord, my God.
7. O, be not farr, since pain so nearly presseth,
Since there is none, O God, who it redresseth:
I am enclos’d with yong bulls’ madded route,
Nay, Basan-mighty bulls close me about.
8. With gaping mouth these folks on me haue charged,
Like lions fierce, with roaring jawes enlarged:
On me all this, who do like water slide,
Whose loosed bones quite out of joint be wryde;
9. Whose heart, with these huge flames, like wax ore-heated,
Doth melt away, though it be inmost seated:
My moystning strength is like a potsherd dride,
My cleaving tongue close to my roofe doth bide.
10. And now am brought, alas, brought by Thy power
Vnto the dust of my death’s running hower;
For bawling doggs haue compast me about,
Yea, worse than doggs, a naughty wicked rout
11. My humble hands, my fainting feet they peirced;
They look, they gaze, my boanes might be rehearsed.
Of my poor weedes they do partition make,
And do cast lots who should my vesture take.
12. But be not farr, O Lord, my strength, my comfort,
Hasten to help me in this deep discomfort;
Ah, from the sword yet saue my vital sprite,
My desolated life from dogged might
13. From lions’ mouths, O help, and shew to heare me,
By aiding, when fierce vnicorns come neare me
To brethren then I will declare Thy fame,
And with these words, when they meet, prayse Thy name.
14. Who feare the Lord, all prayse and glory beare Him,
You Israel’s seed, you come of Jacob, fear Him;
For He hath not abhorr’d nor yet disdain’d
The seely wretch which foule affliction stain’d
15. Nor hidd from him His face’s faire appearing,
But when he calld this Lord did giue him hearing.
In congregation great I will prayse Thee;
Who feare Thee shall my vowes performed see.
16. The afflicted then shall eat, and be well pleased;
And God shall be by those His seekers praysed;
Indeed, O you, you that be such of mind,
You shall the life that ever liveth find.
17. But what? I say, from earth’s remotest border,
Vnto due thoughts, mankind his thoughts shall order,
And turn to God, and all the nations be
Made worshipers before almighty Thee.
18. And reason, since the croune to God pertaineth,
And that by right vpon all realmes He raigneth,
They that be made even fatt with earth’s fatt good
Shall feed, and laud the giver of their food.
19. To Him shall kneel even who to dust be stricken,
Even he whose life no help of man can quicken;
His service shall from child to child descend,
His doomes one age shall to another send.
Song
Wendell Kimbrough, “Dawning Light of our Salvation”
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