Psalm 74

"They set your sanctuary on fire"

Following up from last week's reflection on Psalm 73, I'm struck by how the Psalms sound given our political moment in America. Reading the Psalms during an anxious election season has been good for my soul.

In Psalm 74 the destruction of Jerusalem has occurred. The poem is written in the midst of national disaster and calamity. The temple has been razed. As the poet sings, "They set your sanctuary on fire."

I can imagine standing there, as a Jewish person, watching those flames, seeing God's house go up in smoke. The invaders smashing and looting sacred things:

Your adversaries roared in the meeting place
where you met with us.
They set up their emblems as signs.
It was like men in a thicket of trees,
wielding axes,
then smashing all the carvings
with hatchets and picks.

Devastated, the singer cries out to God:

God, how long will the enemy mock?
Will the foe insult your name forever?
Why do you hold back your hand?
Stretch out your right hand and destroy them!

God doesn't act in this moment. Israel goes off into exile. The temple will be, eventually, rebuilt. But I've been convinced by N.T. Wright that the Second Temple period was still haunted by a sense of exile, and that the full and final answer to the lament of Psalm 74 was still being looked for in a Davidic messiah. And if that is so, Jesus is the Lord's answer to the singer of Psalm 74.

But what a strange answer! Making things worse, Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple for a second time. God's response to "They set your sanctuary on fire" is to say things like this to the Samaritan woman:

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

God's presence is divested from place and is found, rather, in the man Jesus. He become the temple, the intersection of heaven and earth. God is Spirit, and wherever God's Spirit is the Lord's presence is enjoyed and experienced. This is how the people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, become a living temple made of living stones. 

It seems clear to me, if we trace out the whole story, that the narrative here is one of religious and political divestment. The presence of God is being extracted from both nation and temple and is relocated. This message is timely. Next week, Christians, not sure which ones, will look upon the United States of America and wail: "They set your sanctuary on fire." They will fixate upon national ruin. Understandably so. The singer of Psalm 74 can empathize. But when we look at how Jesus is the answer to Psalm 74, and the political and religious divestment he both represented and demanded, are we able to disentangle ourselves from visions of political, social, and religious ruin to find the God whose Spirit blows unpredictably in the world seeking his true worshippers?