A Different Portion, A Different Peace
Taking a different tack for this Sunday
(Psalm 16:4–5; John 20:19–31)
Most people in the church I’ll be at this Sunday morning would have heard the story of Thomas, and two of the appearances of Jesus with the disciples. I’ll still use the reading from John’s Gospel, but will focus on the set reading of Psalm 16, and particularly verse 4. Exploring this psalm took me along interesting pathways this week, and introduced a new word (to me) - imprecatory psalms. I’m not huge on ‘fancy’ words in sermons, but I found this one helpful as a descriptor for a particular category of psalms. I have found the use of Scripture in Pete Hegseth’s U.S. Pentagon prayer services to be perplexing and concerning, and in particular, his appropriation of the imprecatory psalms for military campaigns.
Anyway, here’s where my sermon preparation has led me this week. (And here’s a link to an online article I found super helpful and which I’ve freely borrowed from in the section on Pete Hegseth’s use of Hebrew Scripture). I’ll see what makes it to the actual sermon on Sunday morning.
Thanks for reading.
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We gather in the glow of Easter - alleluias still on our lips, resurrection still ringing in our ears. And yet, we return to a world that does not feel risen. A world where fear is loud, where violence is justified, where power is baptised in the language of faith. A world where, even in the name of God, some are calling for strength over compassion, dominance over humility, war over peace.
This week I’ve explored Psalm 16, and in particular, verse 4. It sits in contrast to the other ten uplifting verses in this psalm. It does not seem to be a rebuke or a call to repentance for the people of God. It just sits there as a ‘matter of fact’ statement about the nature of the human race.
The psalmist speaks with startling clarity: “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows… their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out.”
This is not merely ancient history from our spiritual ancestors. This is now.
Because there are still “other gods” competing for our allegiance - gods of power, of nationalism, of fear, even gods shaped in religious language but emptied of the heart of God.
They promise security. They promise control. They promise victory.
But the psalmist names the truth: they only multiply sorrow.
And we see it every day - in every life diminished, in every enemy created, in every act of violence wrapped in righteousness, in every bomb dropped on innocent civilians.
And then comes this quiet, courageous refusal:
“Their offerings of blood I will not pour out… The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.”
The psalmist draws a line in the sand. The psalmist makes a decision about who God is, and who God is not, and the appropriate ‘god fearing’ way to live.
I have been concerned about the religious language appropriated by Pete Hegseth (U.S. Secretary of Defence), delivered with utter conviction, which only makes it all the more disturbing. Hegseth is a member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, founded by Doug Wilson, who self-identifies as a Christian nationalist.
In his Pentagon prayer he prays for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and for “every round (to) find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation”.
The Pentagon prayer was primarily a compilation of verses from the Hebrew Scriptures. And words, of course, derived from another place and time and context. The language borrows most heavily from what are known as the imprecatory Psalms - prayers that call for divine judgment on enemies, sometimes in violent terms.
Hegseth’s prayer included the words: “Almighty God who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle”, a line taken directly from the beginning of Psalm 144. When Hegseth asks God to “break the teeth of the ungodly,” he is repurposing both Psalm 3:7 and Psalm 58:6, both of which refer to God “breaking the teeth of the wicked.” And when he implores “Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind,” he is combining language from as many as five Psalms (1, 2, 35, 69 and 79).
For Hegseth, the enemies of the U.S. are the literal enemies of God, justifying the war in the Middle East and the incredible military expenditure and violence. Civilian deaths are seen as collateral damage of the war.
This week I read an online article that looked at Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon prayer, and Pope Leo’s response, through the lens of Augustine. I found it very helpful.
The article highlighted that Augustine, in his Expositions on the Psalms, confronted the imprecatory Psalms and insisted that they cannot be read as endorsements of hatred or cruelty toward other human beings for the simple reason that then they would not be from God.
“Trains our hands for battle and our fingers for war” refers, according to Augustine, to the conquering of our enemies by works of mercy and charity.
And calls for God to break the enemy’s teeth refer not to physical violence, but to the silencing of evil and destructive words.
Within the Christian tradition, the Psalms speak in a spiritual register not a literal one. Calls for violence do not refer to military battles or human enemies, but to the enemies inside the human soul: sin, injustice and the disordered loves that deform our will.
When the psalmist calls for destruction, Augustine reads this as the destruction of vice, not of human beings in battle. His exegesis is therefore not a “softening” of the imprecatory Psalms; it represents a robust interpretation that is grounded in Augustine’s most fundamental theological claim — that God is love made visible in Christ.
In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine articulates this claim clearly as it applies to Scripture: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbour, does not yet understand them as he ought.”
In the Christian tradition, the violent language found in the imprecatory psalms can never be separated from Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. Scripture should never, as Hegseth does, be marshalled to sanctify hatred, even when that hatred is cloaked in the language of justice or national defence. Any Christian who prays these psalms must do so with an awareness that their ultimate meaning is the transformation of the self, not the destruction of the other.
Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday homily was a rebuke of Hegseth, quoting the book of Isaiah, stating that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’ “ (Isaiah 1:15).
Pope Leo did not merely choose passages from Scripture that supported his political commitments. Rather, he is interpreting the whole of Scripture through the same lens of charity and mercy and love of neighbour.
Any prayer that asks God to destroy one’s enemies, while leaving intact the structures of hatred and violence within the self, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God. The question is not whether Scripture contains violent language. It does. The question is whether that language can be invoked to sanctify and celebrate the destruction of human beings. On that point, the Christian tradition, articulated with particular clarity by Augustine, is unequivocal: Any interpretation that does not build up love of God and neighbour is not simply politically misguided. It is blasphemous.
Because the God revealed in Jesus Christ is not a god who delights in violence, or blesses domination, or calls us to hate in holy language.
The God revealed in Jesus is the one who enters locked rooms, still bearing wounds, and says, “Peace be with you.”
Not once. But again, and again. “Peace be with you.”
This is the risen Christ - not demanding revenge, not naming enemies, not calling for retribution - but breathing peace into fearful hearts.
And then, astonishingly, he sends his disciples out: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Which means:
Go, and live this peace.
Go, and embody this mercy.
Go, and refuse the gods that multiply sorrow.
Even when they speak loudly.
Even when they sound convincing.
Even when they claim the name of God.
Because not every voice that names God speaks truth.
And not every cause that claims righteousness bears the fruit of the gospel.
So we are left with a choice.
Every day, in ways small and large: Which god will we follow?
The gods that demand fear, and triumph over violence and power?
Or the God who bears wounds, and breathes peace?
The psalmist declares: “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.”
And perhaps that is our Easter calling too - to choose, again and again, the God made known in Jesus. To refuse what distorts and diminishes life. To resist what multiplies sorrow.
And to become, in a fearful world, people of the risen Christ - people who carry peace, who speak truth, who live with courage and compassion, even when the doors are still locked.
Prayer
God of life, in a world of competing voice and fragile truths,
you come to us in Christ - not with power that destroys,
but with love that bears wounds, and peace that will not let us go.
When we are tempted by fear, when other “gods” call for our allegiance,
when sorrow seems to multiply around us,
steady our hearts.
Help us to choose you again - our portion, our cup, our life.
Breathe your peace into us, that we may carry it into the world -
with courage, with compassion, with truth.
In the name of the risen Christ, Amen.