Worship Weblog
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Meditation on Psalm 14: Fool
Reading 4: Psalms 14-17
Psalm 14 focal phrase: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” focal word: fool Suppose for a second that this line isn’t just a rebuke of atheists. Put aside the philosophy of it—does God exist?—and suppose this psalm isn’t about scoring points against Stephen Jay Gould. Suppose it’s about you, me, all of us, and our folly. Who is the fool who says there is no God? Suppose it’s the rich man in Luke 12. He strikes it rich, builds bigger barns, and wallows in his luxury. “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” (It cracks me up that he actually addresses his own soul, voicing an inner monologue; it’s either a humorous touch, or a device that shows how utterly isolated he is.) God responds, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” In a sermon on this passage from Luke, Rev. Thea Leunk says that Jesus, by using the word “fool” here, is invoking Psalm 14. If so, it’s an interesting way of interpreting the psalm. The fool who denies God does not have primarily have a crisis of doctrine, but a crisis of overall perception of her own importance and self-reliance, in relation to God. The fool’s folly, Leunk says, is the folly of “the wrong perspective ... the folly of forgetting that God is the one who provides blessings like good harvests and barns stuffed to the rafters.” She concludes, “Only those who live in relationship with God will have peace about their future,” and quotes The Message: “fill your barns with God and not with self.” The fool who says “there is no God,” then, believes the folly of smug self-sufficiency. This fool is a prisoner to personal ambition, and a prisoner to greed. Our wealthy, materialistic culture is full of these fools. And so, sadly, is the church. If this is folly, what is wisdom? “The only way to stop being anxious over what we have not been able to grab onto is to let go of the things we have in our hands,” Leunk says. “Our generosity towards others is the surest mark of how well we have mastered this truth of Jesus’ teaching. The disciple who is at peace, who understands what it is to rely with confidence on God’s provision, is the disciple who gives like God gives—with generosity, with pleasure.” The opposite of hoarding is generosity. The opposite of self-reliance is self-giving. There’s nothing inherently wrong with material things, or even with big barns—God’s kingdom is a place of abundance and feasting. But when our barns, our things, our riches, give us a sense of false security, false self-sufficiency—when they alter our perception of our own importance and God’s providence—then they’ve made us foolish. I wonder if the Spirit is saying to us as we watch TV commercials or thumb through catalogs, check our stocks or build our dream house—I wonder if the Spirit is saying to us, “Don’t be a fool.”
More Meditations on the Psalms
Related Resources
The Biblical Psalms and Christian Worship