Psalm 41
“Health and Prosperity”
September 22, 2019 – Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Who likes poetry? Please raise your hand. As some of you heard me say in Sunday School last week, I like poems that rhyme. In high school I memorized Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” It starts,
There are strange things done in the midnight sun,
by the men who moil for gold.
The arctic trails hold their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold.
I also enjoy more serious poets like George Herbert from the seventeenth century or
T. S. Eliot from the twentieth century, but I still tend to appreciate their rhyming poems more than their others.
But when we turn to the poetry of the Bible, one of the first things you notice is that none of it rhymes. It couldn’t really, because we’re reading it in translation. And it is pretty hard to translate rhymes. What rhymes in one language does not rhyme in another. And some languages, like Italian, have many more rhymes than English. The same goes for what poets call meter or rhythm. That bouncing flow of “There are strange things done in the midnight sun,” would disappear if you translated it into Spanish or Chinese.
Which means that it is providential that, while Hebrew poets may have used rhyme or meter or other not-so-translatable devices like acrostics, the main form of their poems carries over into other languages. We experience it every Sunday as we read a psalm responsively, one line by a leader, the other by the congregation. The psalms were almost meant to be read or sung that way, because that’s how they were mostly written, in two-line or sometimes three-line verses, with each line complementing or contrasting with the other.
You heard it here in the psalm we are focusing on today:
Oh, the joy of those who are kind to the poor!
The Lord rescues them when they are in trouble.
The thought of that first line, “Oh, the joy of those who are kind to the poor!” is expanded and explained by saying, “The Lord rescues them when they are in trouble.” And the next three sets of two lines keep carrying that forward, echoing back and forth that idea of the Lord’s protection and care for those who are kind to the poor.
The Lord protects them
and keeps them alive.
He gives them prosperity in the land
and rescues them from their enemies.
The Lord nurses them when they are sick
and restores them to health.
All that could easily be said more simply and in fewer words. Those first two lines really contain the whole idea, but those repetitive and complementary pairs of lines allow us to soak the thought in, to grasp it, to feel it, just like a repeated chorus in a hymn or a praise song does.
I chose this particular psalm from our reading last week partly because it is one which does not get a lot of attention, but partly because of where it falls in the Psalter, which is another name for the book of Psalms. As you can easily see in your Poets volume, Psalm 41 is the last psalm in Book One of the book of Psalms. Like the last page in many books, there is something significant here for us, something important enough to have been held until the end.
If you go back to the beginning of Psalms, page 3 in Poets, you see that the first psalm starts the same way this one does, “Oh, the joys of those…” It’s different from the more traditional translation “Blessed are those.” But “Oh, the joys” sounds poetic and conveys something of what the blessing is. These psalms out those who especially enjoy God’s love and favor, the happiness and joy which He gives. The first book of the book of psalms begins by blessing those who do not “follow the advice of the wicked,” and ends by blessing those who are “kind to the poor.”
In other words, Psalm 41 wraps up the first book of psalms by showing us a bit more specifically, a little more practically, what the righteous person of Psalm 1 looks like. In particular, it is someone who is kind to the poor. That’s the sort of person who will be blessed, who will receive joy and happiness from the Lord.
It’s a little awkward to talk about, but I’m sure many of you could share stories about the happiness you’ve felt when you have been kind to the poor, whether it was buying a meal for someone or volunteering at the mission or giving them shelter here during an Egan Warming night or giving backpacks or shoes to kids through Project Hope. It feels good. It makes one happy.
I was feeling pretty good that way at the beginning of last week. Sunday after church there was a fellow sitting under the cover by the office doors here. I greeted him and asked how he was doing. He told me he just wanted to get out of the rain for a while. He thought about coming in to church but didn’t feel like he was clean enough or dressed well enough to join us. I assured him he was welcome however he was dressed. Then I went and got him a bagel and cream cheese left from our snacks. We talked a bit more about faith before he got on his bike and rode off.
The next couple days I did more nice things for people. I visited someone in jail. I took someone out to lunch. I talked to people with problems in person and on the phone. And I was feeling pretty good about it all. “Hey, I got this. I’m doing this Christian thing, this pastor thing. I’m being kind to people who are struggling, helping them in various ways. I feel good.”
The problem was that I was not feeling good otherwise. One day my throat was scratchy. The next day my nose stuffed up. The day after that I felt gunk down in my chest. Here I was doing all this kindness, being the guy God wants me to me, and what did I get? A lousy cold. Where’s the justice, where’s the blessing in that?
So in a small and humble way I relate to this psalm today. Right after David wrote those lines I quoted, about the Lord giving health and prosperity to those who are kind to the poor, elaborating on that theme, he says,
“O Lord,” I prayed, “have mercy on me.
Heal me, for I have sinned against you.”
Whatever that blessing is, whatever that assurance of health and prosperity is about, it did not mean that good people doing good things won’t get sick, won’t have troubles. In fact the largest piece of this psalm, the whole middle section, shows us the psalmist not only being sick and praying for healing, but being tormented by enemies at the very same time. David’s experience went far beyond my stuffy nose. He was not just deathly ill. He had hateful, gossipy, whispering people around him who were glad he was suffering.
I probably don’t need to tell you this, but this psalm is just one of many places in Scripture where we learn that so-called “health and wealth” preachers are full of baloney. Yes, there are many places in the Bible, like Proverbs which we will read this fall, that teach things will go well with those do well, with those who do what is right. But none of that should be interpreted as an immediate guarantee of either health or prosperity. David’s sickness here shows us that.
“Oh, the joys of those who are kind to the poor,” does not mean they will not have their own troubles. They will. We will. David did and even Jesus did. There was no one kinder or more gracious or more helpful to those in need than our Lord. He healed them, He fed them, He befriended them. But His enemies hung Him on the Cross. And He too cried out to God as prophesied by Psalm 22, which we also read this past week.
Even in this psalm we get a little prophecy of what happened to Jesus. As John 13:18 tells us, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was a fulfillment of what is usually labeled verse 9 of Psalm 41:
Even my best friend, the one I trusted completely,
the one who shared my food, has turned against me.
It happened to Jesus. It happened to David. It can happen to you and me. Not just accidents like sickness or natural disaster, but people who turn against us. They may turn against us just because we are what this psalm asks us to be, kind to the poor.
Any of you who have really worked at being kind to people in need may know what I mean. Just do more than give someone a meal or a place to sleep. Start to ask why people are poor in the first place. Start pointing out some of the injustices at work in our society, racial prejudice, low wages, high housing prices, lack of access to medical care. Then try to change the system to make it better for the poor. You will quickly find that you have enemies, enemies who would love for you to get sick and never recover.
The enemies of those who are kind to the poor are all those who would just as soon that the poor stay poor so that they can stay rich. Those enemies are people who blame poor immigrants for crime and for lost jobs. Those enemies are those who suggest that homeless people are responsible for polluting our oceans rather than all of us who use too much plastic. Enemies can even be so-called Christians who quote Jesus out of context saying, “the poor you will always have with you,” as an excuse not to do anything for the poor. You and I will bump into enemies like these whenever we get serious about being kind to the poor.
Saying all that about enemies can sound pretty self-righteous. If we’re honest, it can be pretty self-righteous to imagine that we are the ones who really love and help people while others are just out for their own advantage. That’s why we need to remember that David here prayed to God for mercy and for healing, “because I have sinned against you.” We may try to be kind and generous people, but we are also sinners. We need mercy. David asked for it again, there at the beginning of the third and last section of the psalm, “Lord, have mercy on me.”
That’s why this psalm is an expansion of that simple Beatitude from Jesus, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” When you and I are kind and merciful to someone in need, we must do it remembering our own deep and awful need for mercy. We may not be poor, but we are still poor sinners, as much in need of mercy as anyone else.
In that same verse where David asks again for mercy, and asks again to be made well, he follows with a thought that may be troubling, “So that I may pay them back!” That’s a theme we’re going to find here and there throughout the psalms. David and other psalm writers were not afraid to ask for revenge on their enemies, to be able to pay back those who gave them trouble. That may feel all wrong for us as Christians.
Let’s remember, then, what payback looks like for Christians. In Romans 12:19 Paul says that actual revenge, vengeance, belongs to God. If we want evil enemies to be punished, leave it to the Lord. But Paul goes on to expand on what Jesus said about loving our enemies, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” If we join David in asking for a chance for payback, that’s how we should want to do it, by being kind to our enemies as well as to the poor.
Bible scholars debate whether this psalm is what you might call a “lament,” an expression of sorrow and pain. We’re going to look at more of that sort of poetry in a text from Lamentations next week. But look at how this psalm ends and you will see that it’s not a lament, but thanksgiving psalm:
I know you are pleased with me,
for you have not let my enemies triumph over me.
You have preserved my life because I am innocent;
you have brought me into your presence forever.
David wrote this psalm on the other side of his sickness and the opposition he describes. He is sure at the beginning about the joys of those who are kind to poor, because God has not let him down. He has been merciful and God has been merciful to him. His enemies have not got the better of him and neither has his illness.
Neither this psalm nor anything else in God’s word is “health and wealth” gospel. David was good to the poor but still got sick. Jesus was good to the poor and got crucified. It happens to you and me as well. God healed David this time and protected him from enemies, but in the end David got sick and died. Ultimately that joy, that happiness promised at the beginning is found just where David places it at the end, “you have brought me into your presence forever.” He said it in the 23rd Psalm and he says it here. It is by being with God that we are truly blessed and happy. And anyone can have that.
“Oh, the joy of those who are kind to the poor.” Say whatever you want about Jimmy Carter as a president. He probably was not a very good one. But he is a man who has spent most of his life being kind to the poor, building houses with Habitat for Humanity around the world. And God has been merciful to him.
In 2015, Jimmy was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his liver and to his brain. He thought he might have only two or three weeks to live. But unexpectedly his cancer responded to treatment. By the end of the year he was able to travel to Memphis for another Habitat project. Next month, October of this year, he and his wife Rosalynn will be in Nashville for their 36th work project with Habitat. He is 94 years old. In July he and Rosalynn celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary. Truly, “Oh, the joys of those who are kind to the poor.”
God has been good to Jimmy Carter. He healed him. But Jimmy knows very well that that is not the end of the story. He is a Christian. He still teaches Sunday School occasionally. He knows what the Bible teaches, that his full and complete joy, his final and true blessing will be in the presence of His Lord. Jimmy is merciful and kind to the poor because he trusts in the Lord who is merciful to him.
May you and I learn from David in this psalm. May we learn from Christian heroes like Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. May we learn to be kind to the poor and trust in the mercy of God when not everything goes well for us. And like David, may we give thanks to God when we do experience His mercy, the joy He wants to give us in His presence.
In our Gospel lesson from Luke 16, Jesus said something He said more than once. We cannot serve both God and money. We learn here in Psalm 41, that one of the best ways to serve God is by sharing our money, giving it up so that it has no power over us. Those who love the Lord in that way find real joy and blessing.
The last verse of Psalm 41 is not actually part of the psalm. It’s the closing word of praise for that first book of the book of Psalms. But it sums up beautifully what all those poems aim at, what any good human life is aimed at. May it be the sum of your life and mine.
Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
who lives from everlasting to everlasting.
Amen and amen!
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2019 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj