"Hymn of the Underdog": a sermon for the SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (05 OCTOBER 2025)
Text: Psalm 94
1. UNDERDOG
STATUS.
Life’s
not fair! How does this truism
strike us? Do we hear it as a simple
fact of life, or does it strike us as being a somewhat cynical statement? If someone utters this phrase after having
experienced some relatively minor setback, such as not getting promoted at
work, we will perceive it differently perhaps, from when we think it to
ourselves as we watch the news and see images of children sitting on a pile of
rubble that used to be their home, with their parents buried underneath.
Indeed, in
the early days of World War II, the BBC invited a popular Christian writer (and
Oxford lecturer) to give a series of radio talks on Christianity to boost the
morale of the British people who were enduring the Blitz of the Luftwaffe
(German Air Force). As he began his
series of addresses on “the wireless”, C.S. Lewis invited his listeners
to consider why there are so many arguments that basically boil down to one
person complaining to another: “That’s not fair!” Lewis proceeded to develop his argument of
“right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe” (the title of Book I
of Mere Christianity). Where did
we get this idea of “fairness”, of right and wrong, of justice and
injustice? Why don’t we simply accept
the world as it is, without complaint?
What is it in our nature that makes us revolt against the suffering of
the innocent, or something as (relatively) banal as unfair food prices? Why are we convinced that there’s something
wrong with the world? As Lewis would go
on to explain to those tuned in to his BBC talks, Christianity offers us an
account of why the world is the way it is and what God has done, is doing and
will do about it.
If there is
no Creator, if there is no one responsible for this world, then there is no
one, ultimately, to whom we can complain.
But if there is a God – who is just – then one can lament the sad state
that the world is in, that one’s life may be in. And that is indeed what our Psalm this
morning is – a lament, a complaint.
At least, it begins that way, before moving on to an expression of
triumphant trust in the “righteousness” of God.
Those who
truly lament injustice are those who are suffering its effects. Indeed, the Bible is chock full of laments. This makes perfect sense, because the people
of God were called to be a people of justice in the midst of an unjust world. Israel was called to be acutely sensitive to
the injustice of the world, and to conduct their life as a nation
differently, in a truly just way – hence, the importance of the Law (of
Moses). Of course, the Hebrew Scriptures
tell a tale that shows just how difficult a vocation this was to live up to and
to live out.
The
people of God were called to be underdogs in a world where, as the old
saying has it, “man is wolf to man”.
Remember the words of Jesus, “I send you out as sheep among wolves…”
(Mt. 10.16). Think about it – how did
the people of God begin? God called
Abra(ha)m to leave his urban, civilized, imperial environment of Mesopotamia/Babylonia
and to become a nomad – essentially, to become homeless. True, the God who called him away from his
comfort and security also made grandiose promises about a land, innumerable
descendants and a great reputation (“name”), but Abraham would not live to
see the fulfillment of any of these promises. Abraham died as an unknown sojourner in a
land that did not belong to him, leaving behind 8 children (i.e. Ishmael and
Isaac, as well as 6 children by his second wife: cf. Gn. 25.1-10). More than that, God even makes a dark
prophecy to Abraham that his descendants will spend 4 centuries as slaves in a
foreign land (Gn. 15.12-14). This
people, of whom Abraham is the “father”, is destined to be a nation of
underdogs – it will be them against the world, the odds will be stacked
against them. Welcome to the people
of God. The default status of the
people of God is to be underdogs.
It was in Egypt – the other cradle of civilization,
besides Babylonia – that Abraham’s descendants fell victim to the dark drives
of empire. Provoking Pharaoh’s fear as
an ever-growing ethnic minority, the “Hebrews” were enslaved. Finally, Yahweh heard the cries of his
oppressed people (cf. Ex. 3.7-8) and sent Moses back to Egypt to deliver the
people of God. A protracted struggle ensued
– enacted “in heaven” between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt and “on earth”
between the opposing teams of, on the one hand, Moses/Aaron and on the other, Egypt’s
sorcerers/Pharaoh (himself believed to be the embodiment of Ra, the Sun-god[1]). During this showdown, the Egyptian empire was
subjected to a series of humiliations, culminating in the “exodus” of the
Hebrews (cf. Ex. 3—15). So, already in
the first two books of the Bible, the God of Israel set himself against the
pride and domination of empire – whether it be that of Babylon or Egypt. The people of this God are called to
demonstrate a radical alternative to empire – they are to be a tribal
confederation on the march to the Promised Land, led by a prophet
(Moses) and a priest (Aaron) and living under the rule of Yahweh, the
truly divine king.
Moses
tells it straight in the book of Deuteronomy as he explains why Yahweh rescued the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt:
“For you are
a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your
God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his
people, his treasured possession. “It was not because you were more numerous
than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose
you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because
the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your
ancestors that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand
and redeemed you from the house of slavery...” (Dt. 7.6-8)
A nation of powerless slaves who are loved
by an all-powerful God – that is who Israel is.
Psalm 94 provides us with a window onto the
entire Old Testament story of Yahweh and his people Israel. Following
the “exodus”, the 12 tribes of Jacob[2]
settled in Canaan and eventually formed the kingdom of Israel[3],
ruled by a monarch whose throne was in Jerusalem, a.k.a. Zion. The king of Israel was understood to be the
“son” of God, i.e., Yahweh’s vice-regent (cf. Ps. 2). God promised David, Israel’s second king,
that his dynasty would be eternal (cf. 2 Sam. 7). The kingdom of Israel was thus intended to be
the “kingdom of heaven” on earth.
Israel’s territory was the claim that the Creator had staked in the
world that he had made but that had rebelled against him. Israel was the unique people of God (cf. Dt.
7.6-8), perched precariously between Egypt to the West and the mighty empires
of the East – Assyria, Babylon and Persia (and eventually, a world-conqueror
from the West…).
The odds were always stacked against the
kingdom of Yahweh; indeed, over time, the neighbouring pagan kingdoms would
begin to encroach on Israel’s autonomy.
There were also liabilities within the kingdom of God – following the
death of David’s son, Solomon, the kingdom split in two, becoming “Israel” in
the North and “Judah” in the South. Not
for the last time in the chequered history of the people of God, each of the
two estranged kingdoms would sometimes form alliances with pagan empires,
either in order to press their advantage over their domestic rival or to form a
strategic front against a yet stronger mutual imperial enemy. Eventually, the Northern kingdom fell to the
Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the Southern kingdom to the Babylonians in the year
587. With the sack of Jerusalem and the
exile to Babylon of Zedekiah, the last of the “sons of David”[4],
the kingdom of Yahweh on earth – along with its “eternal” royal dynasty – was
ended. The gods of Babylon and the
other nations had triumphed, or so it seemed.
With the apparent end of the Davidic dynasty, a protracted period of suffering began which saw the people of Yahweh subjected to the rule of a series of pagan kingdoms until, while under the heel of the greatest empire the world had ever known, a young itinerant figure – an underdog among underdogs – came into the villages of Galilee proclaiming that the kingdom of God had finally arrived…
2. FAITH:
A MEANS TO TRANSCEND OUR STATUS?
Back to our Psalm. Our psalm this morning – and many others –
make new sense when read against the backdrop of this period of pagan
oppression of the people of God. After
his lament of the suffering inflicted upon the people of God by “the wicked”, the
Psalmist changes his tune in verse 12.
He began his psalm by summoning the “God of vengeance” to rise up and
judge the wicked, who think they can oppress God’s people with impunity,
without consequences. After exhorting
these “wicked idiots” that God is well aware of their crimes and will not let
them get away with it, our psalmist switches from lament to rejoicing in verse
12:
“Happy/blessed are those whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
giving them respite from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked…
for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.” (Ps.
94.12-13, 15).
Good news!
Those to whom God transmits teaching from his Law will be protected from
“days of trouble”. These people are “the
righteous” and they will receive justice while a pit is dug – i.e. while disaster
is prepared – for “the wicked”. What
reassurance! The path to protection is
laid out before us, while we are promised that our oppressors will get what’s
coming to them. Perhaps we can rise above
our underdog status and begin to dominate for a change.
The psalmist compares and contrasts
the righteous and the wicked. Where have
we seen this juxtaposition before?
Psalm 94 within the Psalter
The Psalter – i.e. the whole book – opens
with two psalms that set the tone for the entire collection. In Psalm 1, the world is divided into two
types of people – the “righteous” and the “wicked”. The righteous are those faithful members of
the people of God who “delight in the law of the Lord”, while the wicked
are those who are “lawless”, unfaithful covenant breakers, whether they be
Israelites or Gentiles, pagans.
In the first Psalm, two
“ways” are available to human beings – “…the Lord watches over
the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
(Ps. 1.6).
The righteous live their lives in
the presence of God, being aware of God’s omnipresence, and seeking to obey
God’s commandments, i.e. to live “justly, righteously”. The righteous live by faith, i.e. they trust
God to provide for them, to guide them and establish them (especially in the
Promised Land).
The wicked, for their part, live
life with no regard for God, his laws or the requirements of his justice – they
are “practical atheists”. The wicked
live by “the law of the jungle”; it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and they are going
to do what they have to do to survive.
The wicked have no scruples about playing dirty, and they often take
advantage of the righteous, whose conscience doesn’t allow them to play by the
“rules of the jungle”; the righteous are honest, compassionate and generous,
and so they are often perceived by the wicked as being naïve and gullible.
What counts, above all else, is obedience
to the law of the Lord, as it says in Psalm 119:
“I find my delight in your commandments because I love
them. I revere your commandments,
which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.” (Ps.
119.47-48).
Again, Psalm 1:
“Happy/blessed are those (whose)
delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate
day and night…
In all that they do, they prosper.” (Ps. 1.1-3).
Psalm 1 is all about faithfulness to the Law of God, and the promise of being rewarded for that faithfulness.
Psalm 2 begins, not surprisingly,
with reference to pagan arrogance and hostility:
“Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and his anointed…”
(Ps. 2.1-2).
The psalmist goes on to affirm
that Yahweh has established his anointed king (i.e. “Messiah”) in Zion, and
that he has “begotten” Israel’s king as his son. Yahweh then promises victory to his earthly
son:
“Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
(Ps. 2.8-9).
The first two psalms set the
tone for the whole Psalter – they tell us that the duty of the people of God is
to meditate and practice the law and to hopefully wait for the coming of the
Messiah, thus showing themselves to be among “the righteous”, those to whom God
will grant victory and who will rescue Israel from all her oppressors, i.e. “the
wicked”. When the Messiah comes, those
members of the people of God who have remained faithful under the duress of
pagan persecution with be “justified”, i.e. they will be seen to truly belong
to the saved people of Yahweh and his anointed.
Awesome! So as long as we
are careful to keep the law of God, we can rest assured of our eventual vindication
and God’s eventual destruction of our enemies, most probably though the Messiah,
the one who is both son of David and son of Yahweh, as we saw in Ps. 2.
This is where light is shed on the
controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were tired of the people of God
being the underdog. They longed for the
kingdom of God to be established and for the Messiah to rule the nations from
Jerusalem – remember Psalm 2? The
Pharisees were obsessed with the Scriptural formula “the righteous will prosper
and the wicked will perish” – remember Psalm 1?
The book of Deuteronomy was clear – if Israel ever found herself once again
enslaved to a pagan empire, it would be because she had broken the covenant
with Yahweh. Salvation, i.e. rescue,
depended on repentance, on covenant renewal, on national righteousness. This was the pharisaic program; we are going
to get all the members of the people of God to live in such a way that it will
be next to impossible to break the law, to transgress the terms of the covenant. We are going to show ourselves to be so
faithful to Yahweh that he will come and deliver us from our enemies and
establish his kingdom among us.
When Jesus comes along proclaiming, “the
kingdom of God is here”, the Pharisees are like, Who are you? Who’s your rabbi? Which seminary did you graduate from? What do say about this case, how do you resolve
that legal dilemma? Prove your
orthodoxy! Why do you allow your
disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath, why do you heal on the Sabbath
day?! Jesus’ kingdom-program looked
dangerously close to lukewarm compromise, and the Pharisees wanted to put a
stop to it, even if it meant taking drastic action against this Galilean pseudo-rabbi. Why did Saul of Tarsus imprison and
kill followers of Jesus? He tells us later
on in the letters he wrote as a Christian – he had been “full of zeal for the
law”. Just like the heroes of history
who had been tortured and killed for refusing to compromise their obedience to
the covenant, Saul had been ready to go to any lengths to destroy what he
perceived to be a blasphemy, a betrayal of biblical faith, a contempt for the
traditions of Israel – Yahweh would not save his people until the people had
returned to faithfulness to the covenant; therefore, these Nazarene heretics
had to be dealt with.
Once one comes to see faithfulness to the law as a means of controlling one’s destiny, there is a subtle move that one can make. The goal of “the game”, the reason for being a faithful member of the people of God can easily become that of “winning”, of getting the upper hand against “the wicked”. If I’m a member of God’s people, if God is on my side, who can dare attack me and think they can escape God’s wrath? Our natural desire for revenge after having been wronged can twist our focus from God’s purposes – through his people – for the world onto me, my grievance, my concerns, my ego. Instead of trusting the lawgiver, one can be tempted to try and control the outcome by following the formula – obedience to the law, i.e. “righteousness” = success.
Remember Ps. 1? “Blessed are those…
(whose) delight is in the law of the Lord …In all that they do,
they prosper” (Ps. 1.1-3; cf. Jos. 1.7-8).
This formula is repeated over and over again in the Old Testament. The righteous will be successful, and those
who are successful are presumed to be “righteous”, while the unsuccessful are
presumed to have done something wicked.
Remember the friends of Job?
Job, come on, you must have done something for all these
catastrophes to befall you. As (Western)
Christians, we have our own version of this – there is the “prosperity gospel”,
according to which, if you are “spiritually ‘fit’” you will be healthy and
wealthy. Conversely, if you’re
struggling with health issues or financial issues…get your prayer life back on
track! Get your “blessing”! As if God’s will for his children was that
they “succeed”. This can take very
subtle forms, but sometimes I get the impression that the Christian faith is
presented as a way to live the “good life”.
Just go into your local Christian bookstore and scan the titles on the
shelves –
7 biblical keys for a successful marriage;
5 steps from Proverbs to achieve financial freedom;
4 spiritual laws… As if the Bible was some weird, convoluted (albeit divinely-inspired)
self-help book from the ancient world. It’s
not.
C.S. Lewis – yes, him again – said
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and
ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who
wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is
meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
I dare say that many of us have this kind of attitude when it comes to the Bible. We flip it open to find some quick fix for a personal problem, when what the Bible is trying to tell us is the story of God’s plan to create a whole new world. It is within the glorious and sweeping scriptural account of the purposes of God and his kingdom that we discover the role of the people of God and within that again that we discover wisdom for our personal lives, here and now. If we start with ourselves and our own concerns, we will twist and diminish and domesticate everything we read in the Bible. But if we start with God and his purposes, we can frame our own situations correctly. Most of all, such an approach will not let us forget that at the end of the day, it’s not about us, it’s not about me – it’s about God. And that’s good news, because God is good and loves me. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” – according to the greatest theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, this was the most profound theological statement he had ever come across. We’ll never get to the bottom of that one – why does Jesus love me?
3. EMBRACE YOUR UNDERDOG STATUS.
Back to our Psalm again. How do we pray this psalm as a Christian? We know that Jesus loved the Psalms; indeed, the
opening words of Psalm 22 (another lamentation) was on his lips as he hung on
the cross. However, it’s a bit jarring
when one turns from a psalm like Psalm 94 to reading, say, the Sermon on the
Mount. We go from, on the one hand,
a plea that God exert vengeance on one’s enemies to, on the other, admonitions
to love one’s enemies, to turn the other cheek, to pray for our persecutors. We are told that our Father in heaven causes
it to rain on the just and the unjust, on the wicked as well as the righteous. We are told – not that the righteous
are blessed, happy, fortunate – rather, we are told “Blessed are the poor
in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the slandered, the reviled,
the persecuted, the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in
heart” (cf. Mt. 5.1-12). What’s going on
here?
The apostle Paul told the Christians
of the city of Rome:
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil…If it is possible, so far as it
depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but
leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I
will repay, says the Lord.” Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed
them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink…” Do not be overcome by
evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom. 12.17-21).
This passage contains a fascinating
two-fold approach to injustice and towards enemies – our responsibility is
to act as if we are responsible for our enemies’ well-being, and God’s
responsibility is to execute justice and judgment. “Leave room for the wrath of God”, Paul
says. I find it hard to imagine praying
Psalm 94 over someone with whom I’m sharing a meal… In the end, only God can judge, only God
knows the depths of the human heart. Only
God is impartial, free of all egoism, pride and cruelty. In the end, only God is just – the rest
of us are corrupt and self-serving (most of the time).
What was Jesus up to? As he says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do
not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come
not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Mt. 5.17).
Jesus revealed that the purpose of the law had never been to give the
people of God power over their enemies, but rather the law had been
given to equip the people of God for a mission of service to the nations of the
world. As God had told the
Israelites encamped at Mt. Sinai:
“…if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my
treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is
mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’”
(Ex. 19.5-6).
A kingdom of priests, interceding for the nations before the Creator. A holy nation, called to demonstrate God’s
character – to imitate God – in the sight of all the nations. The people of God had never been God’s “favourites”
– as the exile in Babylon should have made painfully clear – rather, God called
a people to be the means by which he would save the world. No Israel, no Jesus. No people of God – no word become flesh, no
incarnation, no sacrifice of the Lamb of God, no forgiveness, no hope. It all started when God told Abram, “Leave
your home, and go to the land that I will show you…and Abraham went without
knowing where he was going…” (cf. Gn. 12.1-3; Hb. 11.8).
When Jesus told the people of God to love their enemies, he was calling them to be faithful to their vocation – priests cannot hate those for whom they intercede, people who imitate the holiness of Yahweh cannot hate those whom he created and those upon which he bestows all the blessings of creation, such as rain. Jesus was saying, in effect, we’ve always been the underdogs because we’ve always been called to be a people who love God and neighbour in a world that doesn’t know what love is. All that the nations – the Gentiles, the pagans – know is fear, pride and violence. All they know is self-preservation and self-aggrandizement.
As our Lord said:
“…among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord
it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not
so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be
your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
(Mk. 10.42-44).
This is hard stuff. Even the disciples of Jesus didn’t get it,
for a long time.
Jesus called the people of God to
lean into their underdog status.
Underdogs are the only people who are useful to God. “Top dogs” are focused on themselves – C.S.
Lewis – yet again – said that “history was the long terrible story of mankind trying
to find something other than God which will make them happy”. Underdogs can focus on God, because what
else are they going to do? When are
our prayers the most authentic, the most healing, the most like the Psalms? –
when we’re down! When things are
dark! When we’ve come to the end of
ourselves. That’s when we turn to
God, and that’s when God, in his humility, receives our prayer, our last-ditch,
desperate act, offered because we’ve got nothing to lose by praying. Yes, God is gracious and merciful enough to
hear our raw, unfiltered, un-edited, un-polished prayers, even a prayer like
Psalm 94.
No, life’s not fair. And that’s OK. Our God is the God of justice, strange
justice. God’s justice is a justice
that moves God to give himself away in love for the good of his creation. God’s justice invites God’s people to participate
in his loving, self-giving purposes for the world. The Bible is clear – one day, there will
be a reckoning, all evil will be destroyed. And the only one who is worthy to open
the scroll and unleash the just judgements of the Creator is the Lamb who
was slain (cf. Rev. 5—6). Judgment
belongs to our God, who is seated upon the throne, and unto the Lamb (cf.
Dt. 1.17). In the meantime, fellow underdogs,
our calling is to love and serve in faithfulness and hope, hope for that day
when our Lord will be seen and known to be king of the universe, when his
kingdom will cover, fill and transform this world into a place of true peace
and justice. As we await the final Day,
let us always pray, “the Lord has become my stronghold and my God the rock of
my refuge.” Amen.
[1] Believed to have been the first
Pharaoh. This “divinization” of the
rulers of empire would continue throughout the ancient world, culminating in
the “apotheosis” of Roman emperors upon their death (their inclusion in the
pantheon and their becoming the object of worship). Indeed, in the Eastern part of the Roman
empire, it was common for the emperors to be worshipped as divine during their
lifetime. This pagan tendency to make a
god out of the person at the pinnacle of the imperial hierarchy is radically
undermined by the Incarnation of (the Word of the true) God as Jesus of
Nazareth, a powerless peasant, born in dubious circumstances, whose early years
were spent as a refugee in Egypt, and who spent most of his life in a
Galilean backwater that was despised even by his fellow countrymen (cf. Jn.
1.1-18, 45-46). The Bible is a
collection of documents that are deeply subversive…
[2] Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, had 12
sons, each of whom became the patriarch of a tribe (2 of the 12 tribes were
named for Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh; Levi was the head of the family
of the Levites, the ministers of the Tabernacle/Temple; the Levites were not
allotted a territory in Canaan).
[3] “Israel” has several meanings in
Scripture: first of all, it denotes an individual, Jacob, whose name was
changed (by God) to Israel; secondly, it refers to the nation composed of the
12 tribes descended from Jacob; thirdly, it refers to a political entity, the
nation-state ruled by the monarch of Jerusalem.
[4] The Babylonians murdered Zedekiah’s
sons before exiling him to Babylon (where he died), thus destroying the royal
line of Davidic kings.
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