Meditation on Psalm 26: Associate
Reading 8: Psalm 24-26
Psalm 26
focal phrase: “I will not sit with the wicked.”
focal word: associate
There’s an old proverb from Chaucer: “He who sups with the devil best use a long spoon.” I always imagined someone sitting at a long table—like the one Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale share in Batman, so long that Wayne has to get up and walk over to Vale to pass the salt. On one end is the devil, and way over on the other is the would-be-Faustian guest, reaching for the soup bowl with a spoon with a ten foot handle. (Ignore the fact for the moment that the proverb appears to tacitly permit dinner with the devil.)
I wonder if that proverb has its root in psalms such as Psalm 1, which warns those who “sit in the seat of scoffers,” and Psalm 26, where the psalmist boasts, “I do not sit with the worthless [meaning “vain, empty"], nor do I consort with hypocrites; I hate the company of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked.”
“Sitting with,” of course, means much more than just sitting with. There are overtones of complicity, intimacy, even conspiracy. Whether you’re at a family meal, a board meeting, or a card game, sitting around a table is an illustration of the connection you have with your host, and your part in what is going on at the table. You’re not just sitting, you’re associating.
But this prohibition on “sitting with” doesn’t, well, sit well with me. It’s not just the self-righteousness of the psalmist—he’s bragging again, which bugged me back in Psalm 12. The reason is that Christ modeled for us a ministry of sitting with sinners.
Matthew, or Levi, was one of those sinners. Mark recalls:
And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
I wonder if Psalms 1 and 26 were on the Pharisees’ minds as they questioned Jesus’ actions. I wonder if they used those psalms themselves to keep a pious distance from undesirable people.
But here Jesus is, sitting with sinners—associating with them—and defending it as the purpose of his ministry. And so you can’t follow Jesus if you walk through the world with long spoons.
Is Jesus contradicting Psalms 1 and 26 when he sits with sinners? I’ll play it safe and say “yes and no.” Yes, he says to the Pharisees, you don’t show your righteousness by staying away from sinners. For one thing, it’s impossible, because you’re one of those sinners; everyone is. For another, you don’t show your faith by keeping your shirt clean in this sinful world, but by rolling up your sleeves and working to grow the kingdom in its midst—the way Jesus did.
“Jesus encouraged the teachers of the law to see the public sinners as sick people who needed to be healed,” pastor Ron Ward says. “Jesus wanted the religious leaders to have a shepherd’s heart. Jesus wanted them to have hope for the healing of the sinsick souls.”
Jesus dined with Levi, and Levi became the gospel writer, Matthew.
But no, Jesus is not revoking the Psalms’ call for disassociating yourselves from the proud, the duplicitous, the cruel. Jesus purpose in sitting at their table is not to take part in their consortium of wrongdoing, but to change the agenda at the table, and to change the people around it. Jesus doesn’t just sit off to the side and content himself with a righteousness of abstinence; he takes David’s defiance of evil in Psalm 26 and passes it on to the people who need it. “When Jesus associates with sinners, Jesus does not get dirty—sinners become holy,” Ward says.
I think there’s a risk in taking a Psalm 26 mentality into the world, if we misunderstand it. One website tell Christians how to stay morally clean when ministering to sinners, as though they are encountering hazardous materials. Are we really to tiptoe around in a spirit of timidity?
On the other hand, we can’t be naive about our own sinfulness and vulnerability to temptation. Psalm 26 goes on to tell us what keeps us anchored in a world filled with evil. “O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides. ... My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.” As long as we stand on level ground, we don’t need long spoons.
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