Doing Good, Seeking Justice

On the heels of Isaiah comes a psalm of judgment. While we may prefer psalms of comfort, like Psalm 23, or psalms of praise and thanksgiving, like Psalm 8, psalms of lament and psalms of judgment give us language for our troubles. Sometimes we complain to God in colorful and angry laments and sometimes God complains about us, taking us to court for our misdeeds. Sometimes God takes our side to praise our deeds of compassion, but in Psalm 50, God testifies against us.

The lectionary’s selection of verses does not lay out the case against us, but Isaiah and other prophets list the errors of the leaders of God’s chosen ones, the sins of the people who forget they were once foreigners, and the iniquities of those who mistreat the widows and orphans. And in verses 18-20, a portion of the psalm omitted from the lectionary reading, the psalmist adds some new specific sins: befriending thieves, keeping company with adulterers, speaking evil, and slandering one’s kin.

God is both attorney testifying against us and judge deciding our case. In verse 22, God proclaims a harsh sentence. Some people experience God as this kind of judge as their pastors preach condemnation, though often for a list of personal sins rather than the societal sins of injustice named by the prophets and found in these judgment psalms. Yet, even within this psalm of judgment, we hear that God prefers prayer, thanksgiving, and going the right way. Our reading from Isaiah this week offers us an explanation of going the right way: “do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (1:17). In the early church, Christians were often known as people of the Way, and even today we strive to be followers of the compassionate and loving Jesus, staying true to his Way.