The Job of Government.

Psalm 72.

I.

            Sometimes I get into a conversation with a person who says, “I believe in helping the poor and the disadvantaged.  I just don’t believe it is the job of government to do this.”  And that’s their justification for cutting Food Stamps or unemployment benefits, or for advocating the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare.  “It’s not the government’s job; individuals should be doing this,” they say.

            Sometimes they try to tell me that this is a Christian and biblical position they hold.  I tell them that they must have a Bible in which Psalm 72 – and a lot of other passages – are missing.

            Psalm 72 is a great enthronement Psalm.  It was sung by the people at the coronation of the king.  The king was the head of the State on God’s behalf, and he was the government.  This Psalm is specifically about what God expects government to do.  It is not written to the king as an individual citizen as a guide to his private life.  In biblical times the king was not an individual in this sense; he represented the people in a way that is largely lost to us. 

            In this Psalm the new king is given instruction by God concerning how he is supposed to govern.

            The context is that the old king has just died, and the new king, often a boy or young man, is called upon to take over the throne.  There is a great ceremony in Jerusalem, where the king-to-be moves up in procession to the Temple.  The priests wear their ceremonial robes.  Thousands of people are present to encourage the king and celebrate the continuity of the dynasty.

            There is music and singing; and they are singing this Psalm, to God, at the top of their lungs.  “God, give your judgments to the king.  Give your righteousness to the king's son.  Let him judge your people with righteousness and your poor ones with justice.  Let the mountains bring peace to the people;

let the hills bring righteousness.  Let the king bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, but let him crush oppressors!  Let the king live as long as the sun, as long as the moon, generation to generation.”

            And so on.  It is a plea to God that this will be a good king!  And it defines and spells out clearly what a good king, a good government is and will do.   He will “bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, [and] crush oppressors.”

            Now, we don’t have a king, of course.  But we do have a government.  I wish we sang this Psalm at every inauguration and installation of our government officials.  This Psalm expresses what Christians – and perhaps others as well – should expect of our government.  It expresses what we should expect of ourselves, since in a democracy we are the State; the government represents us.  We should pray this prayer over our leaders all the time because it says what God wants.  It tells us how to stay in harmony with God’s will and plan, thus ensuring peace, justice, and prosperity.

II.

            I have to say, though, that this never really worked.  In spite of what the people pray with they sing this Psalm for the new king, all the kings of Judah, and especially of Israel, failed.  Some did better than others, relatively speaking.  Some, like Ahab, were unmitigatedly horrible.  But even the best kings – David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah – were deeply flawed and in the end did not keep the promise of this Psalm.  The nation eventually suffered the consequences of falling into idolatry and injustice. 

            It is not that God punished them for their bad theology.  It is that their actions in allowing, or even promoting, injustice and inequality put them in opposition to God and thus to God’s creation and people, and eventually this contradiction caused a catastrophe.  As it always does.

            This Psalm tells the king – the government – how to avoid this.  It tells the king what kind of government will keep him in harmony with God the Creator and the creation, so that the people will not experience the horrible disasters that invariably ensue when we disregard God’s will and instead allow idolatry and injustice to flourish among us.

            The core of what the king is supposed to do, that is, the central and essential job of government, is expressed in verses 12 through 14.  “He delivers the needy who cry out, the poor, and those who have no helper.  He has compassion on the weak and the needy; he saves the lives of those who are in need.  He redeems their lives from oppression and violence; their blood is precious in his eyes.”

            In fact, if you read the Psalm closely, caring for the needy and weak is the only thing the king or government is supposed to do.  There is nothing in this Psalm asking God to authorize the king to make war, or build roads, or keep out foreigners, or make trade agreements, or manage the currency, or even arrest and prosecute criminals! 

            Not that kings and governments should not do those things.  Indeed, these are things concerning which governments usually don’t need to be reminded.  The government has no problem doing anything that involves violence and power, or that results in impressive projects that the king can put his name on.  If anything, government needs to have a brake put on this kind of authority because it is so easy for it to get out of hand.  This is what the prophet Samuel warned the people about when he set up the monarchy in the beginning.

III.

            But the only thing God cares about, and the only thing the people plea to God about, is that the king take care of the needy, the poor, and the weak.  This is what the king needed reminders about.  Not just at his coronation.  But God continually sends prophets with the same message.  They tell the king, “Look, it’s not about you.  It’s about God’s people whom God has appointed you to watch over and protect.  And you are to watch over and protect them, not according to your own impulses – God doesn’t care about your opinions and reasoning.  You are to watch over and protect them according to the Law that God gave the people. 

            The problem with having a king, or a government, is that it creates a power differential and two classes.  Kings just naturally end up associating with wealthy and powerful people.  A king is not going to appoint a homeless single-mother to his cabinet.  He is more likely to appoint the CEO of some corporation, or a military general, or one of his own royal relatives.  The advice the king receives is going to be skewed by the interests of the kind of people who have access to the king.  It reminds me of that famous quote from President Coolidge.  When asked about the economy, he said, “Everyone with whom I come in contact is dong well; of course, they would have to be doing well or they wouldn’t come into contact with me.”

            God knows this, of course.  So God puts into the heart of the people this Psalm, whereby the people remind the king what his real job is.  So that at his coronation the king has to listen to thousands of voices singing, “Don’t forget what your real job is, O king!”

            The king is to use the power God has given him to bring about the equality and justice envisioned in God’s Law.  God insists that the people, and their government, never forget that they were slaves in Egypt.  And God gives the Law so that they will not ever degenerate into an oppressive polity like that of Pharaoh.  This is not just because of how horrible it is to be a slave and not wanting to place anyone else in that position.  But, as this Psalm indicates, following God’s Law brings peace and prosperity.  As opposed to the series of 10 plagues, environmental disasters that Pharaoh’s idolatry and injustice brought down upon Egypt.

            And God’s Law is, frankly, redistributive.  When the people sing that the government take care of the poor and needy, those resources have to come from somewhere.  And the Law of God provides, in the principles of Sabbath and Jubilee, for resources to be periodically redistributed downward.  To sing this Psalm is to advocate for wealth to be taken from those with too much and donated to those with too little.

IV.

            Near the end of the Psalm, God reminds the people that this is the recipe for general prosperity.  If the king, in obedience to the Creator, adopts policies that create equality and justice among the people, then there will “be abundant grain in the land,” waving “on the mountaintops,” its fruit flourishing “like [the famously green and abundant land of] Lebanon.”  Then the king’s name will last forever.

            In other words, a moral government policy that dedicates itself to lifting up the disadvantaged and bringing about equality through redistribution will create prosperity for everyone.  This is God’s promise.  God is saying, “I made the world to work this way.  Trust me.”  Just as injustice is rooted in idolatry and bears the bitter fruit of disaster; justice reflects joyful worship of the One God and bears the sweet fruit of abundance for all.   

            As I said, none of the kings really lived up to this vision.  Kings always fall to the temptation of their wealthy friends who convince them that, contrary to God’s will, it is really best for everyone if some have more and most have less.  They get convinced that, contrary to God’s Word, the way to help poor people is to give money to rich people. 

            And of course we still delude ourselves that this works, even though throughout history it never has.  Throughout history the practice of economic inequality has always led inexorably to some kind of catastrophe.  Think of the French and Russian Revolutions.  Think of what we are even now doing to the Earth’s climate, and what consequences we are already beginning to face.

            But God does not give up on us.  And, in the end, God sends a new and different kind of King.  God comes to us in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  He is our King.  He is the One enthroned on high.

            Jesus does not need to be reminded of this Psalm.  He embodies this Psalm.  He gathers around him a new community made up of the disadvantaged, the outcast, the alien, the poor, the sick, the excluded, and those deemed by the establishment to be hopeless sinners.  He proclaims Jubilee; he brings forgiveness and release to all.  It starts in the human heart, where people experience repentance, that is, their minds and outlook changes so they can welcome others as equals and no longer see according to hierarchies and categories. 

            As Paul says, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; all these barriers have been broken down by the love of God in Jesus Christ, and we have been made one, equals in God’s family.  In Christ, there are no longer human kings at the top and slaves at the bottom; we are all slaves… of the God of love who calls us to live together in joy and peace.

V.

            And our job is to create by God’s Spirit this community of peace reflected and described in Psalm 72, and many other places.  We are Christ’s Body in the world.  We are to embody ourselves these qualities of the good king, as Christ does.  We live in a democracy and in a sense we are the government here too.  As disciples of Jesus therefore it is part of our calling to bring this vision into our public life.  Not as any imposition of Christianity.  But simply as a matter of obedience to the Lord.  And a warning to our own world and country of the consequences of continuing in a polity that feeds injustice and inequality… and offering the promise of one that creates peace and prosperity by following God’s will.

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