Of Solomon.
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, NRSV
Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor.
May he live while the sun endures,
and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth.
In his days may righteousness flourish
and peace abound, until the moon is no more.
May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles
render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts.
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations give him service.
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight.
Psalm 72 paints an ambivalently complex, yet ideal, image of a king whose reign rains justice and compassion (72:6) over a prosperous land (72:3) happily inhabited by a people free from oppression, violence, and war (72:7), whose royal authority is respected – and accepted – by kings near and far (72:8-11). The rule of this king would be considered a golden age literally everywhere, at any point, during human history: crops flourish, resources and natural blessings abound, all people abide in peace, safety, justice, and are free from want (72:12-17).
What elevates this from a job description for the best monarch possible to the stratosphere of eschatological idealist fantasy are the ways that the psalmist reminds readers that this utopian vision – with the just and good king at the head of his people, achieving a land of plenty and justice (72:2) – is entirely the gracious gift of the Divine (72:1), and all rests upon the foundation of the Divine’s good pleasure. Notably, the passage doesn’t specifically restate the theme of Divine approval and support after the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” foundation statement of 72:1. Instead, the psalm ends with a gracious blessing of the God of Israel, in response to the wondrous and glorious gifts the Divine has given the people who will (hopefully) enjoy this unending golden age (72:18-19).
You can easily read between the lines here: the psalmist is revealing a vision of the Kingdom of God with the Divine as the true source of power behind the throne, a beautiful society only possible because the Divine creates the situation to make it so. The unspoken implication here, I’d argue, lies with that gift: not only does just governance drink exclusively from the well of God’s justice, it also depends on the continuance of that grace. Should the king fail to rule justly, or his son fail to continue that rule of righteousness (assuming that the king who will outlast the sun and moon finally, eventually, passes the throne down to his son), there’s a significant possibility that God will rescind the king’s right to the throne.
This psalm effectively declares that the king rules by divine mandate, and the King of Israel is put on notice: mess up and you lose the crown, but keep God’s will for a just society and you could rule for a long, long time.
Speaking of government beholden to something other than itself, I can’t help but respond to the intriguing confluence of events which places the Christian holiday of Epiphany on January 6, a date which has become somehow year-less, akin to a celebrity known only by one name. This date has always held significant importance for the United States of America. It is the date designated for Congress to certify Electoral College votes, and is thus effectively the final ritual of democratic governance before the newly-elected President is inaugurated and takes office. Every four years, like clockwork, this date has passed with great import, but with a lack of fanfare deafening in its silence. Yet, like October 7, September 11, and December 7, the events of one particular January 6 still resonate, the clanging alarm bell reverberating its consequences across nearly every aspect of our national communal life.
I still remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing, when I first learned of the events unfolding that day. It’s a core memory now: watching the events unfold through the magic of the internet (and livestreaming). It’s singed into my consciousness because I knew – as it was happening – that this was something new. Something was being revealed that day, a truth that I had obviously forgotten about, even after Trump lost the 2016 election, spent two months fulminating about being cheated, absolutely refused to accept the reality of his loss, and tried every legal method – and some…less so – to ensure that he was able to remain in office. I could only ignore previous January 6 Electoral College certifications because the import of the day never outshone its seemingly banal, bureaucratic nature as the obligatory Congressional stamp of approval on the election – whose outcome the people had already decided.
In other words, I didn’t have to pay attention to the rituals of governance because they had always seemed so certain before, as if they were guaranteed to always work as they should. What was revealed that day wasn’t the racist and authoritarian underbelly of our country – that’s never been hidden, only ignored. Nor was I surprised by the use of political violence – whether by citizens or state agents – because let’s just say that I’ve read a book or two about American history over the years.
Instead, the bowel-shaking revelation that shook me to my core, that realigned my entire perspective on American democracy, was that I had somehow taken it all for granted – that it could actually all go up in smoke in a heartbeat. My emotions were a maelstrom: disenchantment, distraction, disconsolation, disempowerment, discouragement – I felt them all, at once. I was overcome with rage and overwhelmed with fear. That day delivered a one-two punch to my soul, leaving me gasping for air and clutching for stability in a world that seemed to be falling apart at the seams. Days later, I realised that I was mourning something I didn’t even know could die.
Our country experienced an apocalypse on January 6, 2020. Remember: apocalypse need not mean ‘the end of the world for everyone everywhere’. The Greek word itself does not mean anything other than revelation. This isn’t simply a realisation, or a moment of enlightenment, or even an epiphany: what is revealed must speak to something fundamentally true about the world, a revealing of something that cannot be un-seen, cannot be un-known, and whose impacts cannot be reversed.
In this way, apocalypse can absolutely be the end of the world, while also impacting individual people very differently. The world that we all knew before January 6 ceased to exist the moment the first wave of rioters assaulted the Capitol barricades. We have each experienced the new world which was born at that specific moment in time, yet we have not experienced the same world – not by a long shot.
The last decade has been apocalyptic not because of the turmoil and strife, but because of the ways that the rise of Trumpism has ended the world as we knew it, and from that death brought two new worlds to life. These are two entirely different universes within one country, where people living side by side experience the world around them in fundamentally divergent ways. What is true in one world is almost guaranteed to be seen as lies in the other, and what is seen as right in one world is almost guaranteed to be decried as wrong in the other. Both worlds have their own understanding of truth, publicised by their own media universes. People in one world not only fail to understand the perspective of folks in the other world, they may not even consider people in the other world to be fully human. This level of extreme polarisation usually accompanies some form of civil war – even if it is a cold war, as our current situation seems to be.
These divisions aren’t strictly geographical, despite the common invocation of the red state/blue state categorisation as applicable to an entire state or region. Both worlds are as present in red states as they are in blue: of the over four million votes cast in my state of New Jersey in this past election, over 46% were for Trump. No one can argue that Jersey is red, by any stretch of the imagination, and yet nearly one half of its residents approved of Trump, and agreed with his vision of the country’s present, and its future.
This election the GOP ad machine unleashed an onslaught of anti-queer – and especially anti-trans – advertising which praised the deluge of anti-trans legislation flooding statehouses these last few years, and promised to bring that oppressive chaos to the national level. How does a society begin to heal when my neighbour feels entirely justified in questioning my rights, especially my right to exist? The Kingdom of God – the kingdom pictured in Psalm 72 – seems a long way off, a dream growing more distant everyday as we move inexorably closer to the inauguration.
I am frightened about the consequences of this next January 6, when Congress grants Trump the ability to take the oath of office, and thus to regain the extraordinary power of the Executive Branch – but now as a newly-minted king, free from accountability for his actions, a man above the law. If Trump didn’t send six justices gift baskets then he’s simply ungracious. I’m terrified of what will happen on Day One if Trump actually follows up on his threats to strike down trans existence with a stroke of a pen.
Now, of course he can’t do that – the existence of trans ancestors (or “transcestors”, a portmanteau that I adore) for millennia proves that we’ve always existed, regardless of social acceptance or visibility. We keep being born, so there must be a purpose we play in the kingdom.
What actually terrifies me is the very real possibility that our country will move even farther away from the world described in Psalm 72. What forces will the president embolden, and thus unleash? The questions I am asking now are urgent and personal. For example, as a person who is visibly queer in public – and very intentionally so – should I start wearing a bulletproof vest over my apparently offensive clothing? Will queer people be placed in the legal status of second-class citizens? What will happen to my neighbours unfairly burdened with poverty due to rapacious greed, the families blessed by the presence of people cursed by undocumented status, the children who keep facing the fear of getting mown down in school – and all of them powerless to protect themselves against the extraordinary might of the US government?
I don’t know. No one does. I’m making it a personal spiritual practice to take a breath, close my eyes, and listen for the Divine Spirit every time I catch myself spiraling in a flat spin of doom – a regular occurrence, these days. Wouldn’t you know: it actually helps! The future isn’t written, and much could happen to transform the dynamics that seem so immutable today. God has not finished speaking. Guess what: in four years we might be looking out onto a completely different reality, one where justice and compassion actually do rain down onto a people and a land free from oppression. I know it’s unlikely, but we must trust our idealistic dreams, because that’s the only way that they will remain alive.
