Proper 15, Year C | Psalm 82
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
August 14, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you…’” – Psalm 82:6[1]
A quick glace around the celestial board room reveals this meeting involves all of upper management. Calamity is chatting with Fear over by the nebula dispenser. Fertility and Wealth keep checking notes and scribbling together on a page full of numbers. Ocean and Earth stand toward the corner locked in a quiet yet heated conversation about who has final word on an area of overlapping interest. Tempest, as usual, is already seated, her face stormy as she waits impatiently for the meeting to begin. Suddenly, El sweeps down the hall past the windows and toward the door, and anyone still standing scrambles to their seats. Many continue to whisper and laugh, but the noises quickly die once they see the look on his face.
El, chief of the gods—God to the gods, really—sits at the head of the Table of Time and Space and leans forward in his seat. Elbow resting on the smooth surface and the fingers of one hand thrumming the darkly iridescent expanse in front of him, he slowly makes eye contact with everyone before opening his mouth to speak…
*****
Here at St. Andrew’s we’ve talked about the cosmic worldview of the Ancient Near East before: the Heavens, where the gods lived; the Earth, realm of humanity; and the Underworld, home to the dead and utterly obscure to the living. To understand Psalm 82, we need to dive in a little deeper and better acquaint ourselves with “those who dwell above the sky.”
The modern Western world tends to think of the divine as the Great Individual, answerable to no one and upon whom everything else gratefully depends. But Ancient Near Eastern deities like the ones we see in the Hebrew Bible were a whole lot more social than ours. They interacted and consulted with one another. Sometimes they collaborated. Sometimes they fought. Overall, kept to their specialties yet met regularly to ensure everything was working out as a whole.
Throughout much of the region, the leader of the gods was named El. El is who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob prayed to and followed as the Most High God. The head of an entire hierarchy of deities, El was the God that all the other gods served and worshipped. Under El’s command, the rest of the gods managed particular aspects of the world: geographic areas like mountains or rivers; events and activities affecting humanity as a whole, like seasons or rainfall or war; and what we would describe as emotional or psychological concepts, like faithfulness or courage or hope.
As long as everyone stuck to their niche and tended to their portion of reality appropriately, both the celestial and earthly realms would remain more or less at peace. El managed the gods, broadly known as Elohim; the gods managed overarching aspects of the created world; and way down the chain of command, people managed creation on a much more local level. If someone lower on the hierarchy challenged someone above them or tried to take over a different department, chaos would ensue, shaking “the heavens and the earth,” until El sat everybody down and restored order.
Psalm 82 falls squarely within the structure of these ancient pantheons. El is the God who has “taken his place in the divine council” and stood “in the midst of the gods.” Up in the celestial realm and the higher levels of human society things have been running smoothly, so the gods seem to assume everything’s just fine. But El is “a God near by…and not a God far off.”[2] He’s both a big picture and a detail guy, and he’s noticed some very troubling details down on earth.
So he calls a meeting. Seated at the head of the boardroom table, elbow resting on the smooth surface and the fingers of one hand thrumming the darkly iridescent expanse in front of him, he slowly makes eye contact with everyone before opening his mouth to speak. Then, in more of a whisper than a growl, he asks, “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?”
Everyone stiffens in their chairs, and an uncomfortable silence settles throughout the universe. It seems that without anyone noticing, El has gone down, and despite outward appearances, despite the beautiful cities and sumptuous feasts, despite the abundance of gold and gems and the regular outpouring of adoration from the temples and churches, despite how anything might appear from a distance, the system isn’t working how it’s supposed to. After enough of a pause to make the conversation very awkward, El finally states his demand, “Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
The Elohim recognize that this is not only God’s desire but God’s commanded word. “The system” needs to work for everyone, not just the religious and secular leadership, not just the middle or upper class, not just particular nations, and definitely not just for the gods. El expects his purview—the Kingdom of God itself—will provide, freely, fairly, and above all, justly, for absolutely everyone, and it’s time those at the top got back to their departments to ensure it does.
Turning to our Gospel today, we see Jesus, the Son of God, who stands in the character and tradition of his Father and carries with him the same expectations. When Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth,” and follows up with warnings of division, it’s easy to take his words as condemnation or a call to action, to automatically begin to set ourselves up as teams and assume an us vs. them mindset. We, as Christians, naturally assume we’re already on Jesus’ side; it’s “the ungodly” who need to burn. You know who offends God? Them. Those people are the ones whose sin causes all the problems. They’re the source of the world’s ills. So we need to make sure they get put in their place or, better yet, separated out from us good guys and lit up like kindling.
But that is not what Jesus is talking about.
It isn’t that he doesn’t want to see society transformed—he most certainly does. That transformation is the fire he longs to see kindled. The stressful baptism he expects is the same thing El demands of his cosmic management team: the administration of true justice on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden; for the abandoned and those entering ruin to receive a fair hearing and an appropriate share. This fire is meant not to devour people but to purify, to burn away oppression and selfishness and abuse so God’s Kingdom can stand fully revealed and renewed, a place where not only certain individuals or particular groups align with and travel the path of God’s justice, love, and mercy, but humanity as a whole.
*****
Back in the boardroom, El isn’t finished. After rejecting the gods’ claims of ignorance and pointing out their willful blindness, while “all the foundations of the earth are shaken,” El leaves the cosmic headquarters, entrusting his executives to properly implement his will. Then, without warning, God once again steps down, all the way down to earth, and begins to address a new audience. Not the rulers and authorities and powers. Not just the fabulously wealthy or the influencers of the world. Instead, El turns his attention directly toward us and announces something unexpected:
“I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you.’”
One look at his eyes, and you can see that he means it. There is no metaphor or hidden message behind El’s words:
“You are gods. You’ve heard my instructions to the celestial council. Now join them in rank and responsibility. You are gods: you must judge justly, offering no partiality to the wicked. You are gods: you must give justice to the weak and the orphan; you must maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. You are gods; you are my representatives and my children. So see to the details: feed my people; restore my creation; train my world in equity and faithfulness and compassionate love. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. The responsibility lies with you.”
“I said, ‘YOU are gods, children of the Most High, ALL of you…’”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Jeremiah 23:23