This week our congregation has begun reading together once again a volume from Tyndale’s Immerse edition of the Scriptures. This fall it is Poets, the books of the Bible which include the clearly poetic books Psalms, Song of Songs, and Lamentations but which also includes those books we typically call “wisdom literature,” Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
Our first week reading was Psalms 1-41, the first “book” of the 5 books which make up Psalms in the Hebrew text. I’ve selected as my preaching text for Sunday the last of that section, Psalm 41. It seemed that the last psalm of Book One should have some significance, yet it also seems to be a less familiar, less discussed psalm.
I noted immediately the theme of health which governs most of Psalm 41, although prosperity (happiness in NRSV) is also mentioned (promised?) early on in verse 2. So-called “Health and Wealth” gospel came to mind. Is there a sort of promise here to claim that God will bless us with health and prosperity? I don’t think so.
For one thing, note the condition stated at the outset for those health and happiness blessing. The psalm begins by saying that joy or happiness will be the lot of “those who are kind to the poor.” That’s hardly what contemporary health and wealth preachers tell us. Their spiels are typically founded on some misguided notion that one must simply “claim” the blessings God wants to give. But the psalmist here suggests that God blesses those whose hearts are compassionate toward others in a way that mirrors God’s own compassion.
Moreover, the main section of the psalm, the majority of it, flies in the face of health and wealth preaching which suggests that those who are truly blessed by God will escape illness and misfortune. Instead, verse 3 says that the Lord will be there alongside when one is sick, the premise being that one will get sick. It’s wonderful irony that I write this while suffering from a cold!
So the biggest section of Psalm 41 is a prayer for healing together with a complaint about enemies who pose as comforters (maybe like Job’s comforters, whom we will also consider later this fall). Rather than a picture of unfailing prosperity and healthy, we get a much more realistic image of health that sometimes fails and human thoughts in time of illness.
Overall, however, the illness and complaint is “book-ended” by trust in God, from the first three verses confidence in God’s provision of happiness and health, to verses 11 and 12 again stating trust that God will give victory over both illness and oppressive human enemies.
I’m going to suggest that the psalm gives us very human space to complain and trust in God at the same time, much like Jesus did in His arrest and crucifixion. The final conviction of the psalmist is that he will be brought “into your [God’s] presence forever.” That is a hope that goes beyond any temporal health or wealth.
Prosperity gospel is just false. That’s the consistent teaching of Scripture. As Jesus concludes in our Gospel reading from Luke 16:1-13 this Sunday, “you cannot serve both God and money.” Instead our health and wealth rests in the Lord’s presence with us and ultimately in our presence with Him.