Psalm 5 (Post 8)

Notes

-another psalm of David.

-with Pss.3 and 4 this Psalm provides a morning/evening/morning pattern, perhaps an inducement to regular prayer (Grogan, Psalms: 1117).

Exposition

A king approaches a greater king in humble supplication (vv.1-3). David models here genuine leadership in the community of faith. Followership grounds every form of true leadership. Without a leader truly submitting him or herself to God, leadership practice gets highjacked into models alien to its true nature – corporate CEO, self-improvement therapist, social justice warrior, etc. But the fundamental identity of a faithful leader in God’s people is leading by following God. This seems self-evident but Israel’s history and our own show how rare leadership based on followership really is. Corporatism, therapist, and social justice warrior are all legitimate functions in the church. But their shape and manner of practice will be different by virtue of this leadership grounded in following from typical secular practices of these things.

As David makes his way through this enemy-infested season of life and leadership he relies only on God’s faithfulness. This is truly “the” issue in biblical faith, for Israel and the church. Adam Seligman in his book Modernity’s Wager argues that modernity’s dynamic is the herculean effort to prove that humanity can  opposition to biblical faith. In Israel’s time it was not out in the open the way it is today but still operative as a chief rival to God’s will and way. David realizes this and in this psalm “bets the house” on it. This God

-does not “delight in wickedness” nor consort with evil (v.4);
-does not countenance boastfulness, lies, or bloodthirstiness (vv.5-6); but                                                                       -but offers an “abundance of (his) steadfast love (hesed), and welcome into his presence (v.7).

Hesed is a central and key word in Israel’s vision of God’s character and work. Walter Brueggeman expounds it thusly,

“The Hebrew word for steadfast love is hesed. I translate it as tenacious solidarity. God is in tenacious solidarity with Israel in the Old Testament, particularly with widows and orphans and immigrants and poor people. God is tenaciously in solidarity with them and with the community that participates in God’s faithfulness. We are called to be in tenacious solidarity with the vulnerable which then leads to all kinds of actions and policy formation out of this tenacious solidarity” (https://www.redletterchristians.org/big-trouble-comin-an-interview-with-walter-brueggemann/).

V.9 focuses on deceitfulness. It is

-truthless,

-destructive,

-lifeless, and

-flattering.

David prays that those who prey on others (and him) with deceitfulness fall under the weight of their own perfidy (v.10). A chief form of God’s judgment is to allow the consequences of our actions to crash down upon us. There’s no mechanical or automatic outworking of this, however. That’s why David prays for it. We can’t presume or predict what God will do; he has more options at his disposal than we can imagine and larger purposes for why he does what he does in any situation. But we can pray for his justice to prevail against such enemies.

Ultimately, however, it is joy in refuge in this God David seeks. Despite the enemies and their lies and all the trouble they are causing, David models the big biblical “but”! Nevertheless, even will all this chaos bedeviling him, in the midst of it the king asserts a place of joy, protection, and praise, and a shield-like favor with God (vv.11-12).

Reflection

David’s exhibition of followership/leadership makes me think of one of the most pertinent questions for the church today:  “Why do we believe that Jesus can’t be trusted to lead his own church?” (Lance Ford, Unleader, 140). This, of course, takes us far beyond David and to David’s greater Son who gave even clearer guidance in this direction. For the church this means following Jesus Christ, the suffering servant. Suffering and servanthood, two ideas we have difficulty embracing apart from one another, are almost impossible for us to fathom together. Mike Bishop, reviewing Ford’s Unleader, tells us why.

“Servantship, in practice, is the most difficult style of leadership. It’s easy to ‘build a church’ if you have a strong enough voice and get enough people to listen.  But creating an environment where the Holy Spirit is free to work in the lives of real people, as Lance Ford advocates here, to see them transformed into whole human beings, to nurture a true spiritual family, is a whole other matter” (http://englewoodreview.org/lance-ford-unleader-feature-review/).

Andrew Root (Faith Formation in a Secular Age) fleshes this out employing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of the cross. He argues that the God we meet in Jesus Christ we meet as our minister in situations of life and death (where the reality and power of the cross meet our deepest need). He takes us into his life and in him we too become ministers, to one another and to the world in their situations of extremity and death. We embody the Suffering Servanthood of Jesus in this way. No wonder Bishop calls this the most difficult form of leadership!

But it is Jesus, our greater David’s way of leading. And our way of being greater David’s people.