This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 7/13/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Psalm 82 & Deuteronomy 30:9-14. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
It’s easy to feel out of control in the face of world events. There are floods and earthquakes, wars and revolutions, invasions and genocides. The rulers of the world, the presidents and premiers and their top lieutenants, are playing a game of chess on the map of the earth; a few thousand people killed here, a few million displaced there, they view these as eggs they have to break to make their omelets.
Even a little closer to home, it’s easy to feel helpless. Housing prices are absurd across the region. Our shared transit system is struggling. The City of Oakland has budgetary shortfalls that seem impossible to address without fundamental changes in local, state, and federal policies.
At work, it’s easy to feel out of control, too. I don’t know about you, but I personally have nine bosses. It’s nine degrees of separation from me to the CEO. The man who is the head of my organization (reporting to the CEO) has over 20,000 people under him, and the total number of employees in my company is almost ten times that. In this environment, decisions are made many levels above me that I have no insight into. Sometimes big changes happen – strategic pivots, restructuring, layoffs – and it’s like an earthquake or a hurricane – something I just have to accept as an “act of God.”
We live in a particularly complex age, if only by virtue of the fact that there have never been more humans on earth than there are today. Our city, state, national, and global societies are immensely intricate; there are forces at work that seem more like the weather or magic, even though people are behind all of it.
We are citizens of the most technically and socially complex civilization ever known. Yet in many important ways, we still share the experience of humans throughout time: We live at the mercy of forces beyond our control. We depend on the wealthy and powerful to make good decisions. We depend on the bounty of nature to provide for our needs. We rely on our neighbors to be kind to us, and they rely on us in the same way. We are, all of us, utterly dependent on forces well beyond our control.
I love Psalm 82. It is, in my opinion, one of the most surprising parts of the Bible, which is saying a lot! It’s one of those passages that, if we were writing the Bible today, I think we’d likely leave out. It’s too weird, too divergent, too embarrassing.
This psalm is so embarrassing that even though we know we can’t remove it from the Bible, we look for ways to soften it. I noticed that the translation I had while preparing this sermon, the NRSVUE, puts quotation marks around the word “gods.” The older version of this translation, the NRSV, didn’t have these quotation marks, but for some reason the editors of this edition decided to add punctuation that would downplay the scandal of this text.
Surely the Bible can’t be suggesting that there are any other gods, can it? It doesn’t seem to fit with our faith as monotheistic followers of Jesus.
What does it mean for the Psalmist to put these words in the mouth of God: “You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High”? Who are these gods that God is talking to? Who are these gods that the Most High God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is browbeating for their unjust judgment? Who are these entities in the divine council, to whom God says, “Give justice… Maintain the right of the afflicted… Rescue the weak”?
To a lot of Christians, this is a troubling passage. But I don’t find it troubling at all. On the contrary, Psalm 82 fits very well with my own experience of life. I live in a world full of powerful entities well beyond my comprehension or control. I live in a world where men (and occasionally women) are given authority over the direction of entire nations. I work at a job where decisions are made among a small group of decision makers very high in a massive hierarchy, and the rest of us can do little but respond. We live in a country where the people who reign in Sacramento and New York, and Washington, DC, determine a lot of things about the quality and quantity of our lives here in the East Bay.
When the Psalmist envisions God reprimanding the divine council, when he portrays God holding judgment in the midst of the gods, I’m not confused – I’m overjoyed! “Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!”
The revolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition is not that there are no gods that have us under their power – it’s that there is one Creator God, mighty and just, who reigns over all of history. All the gods must ultimately submit to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. When we see injustice in the world, when we see the gods of our age behaving with arrogance, violence, and oppression, Psalm 82 is a reminder that there is one God who created all things, and who will hold all these little gods accountable.
In a world as broken as ours, that is very good news.
Our reading this morning from Deuteronomy drives this point further home. In this passage, God promises to prosper the Hebrew people, whom he has just led out of slavery in Egypt. He pledges to guide and protect them, because he is King of kings and Lord of lords. He is God of gods. Before him, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth.
Even so, despite all his majesty and power, this Most High God makes it clear that he is immediately accessible to each one of us; all we have to do is turn to him. “Turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” When we do this, when we turn our hearts and minds and intentions to God, we find that the power of all the petty gods of our world has been relativized. We come to live in the kingdom of God, where the most that any little principality or power can hope for is to become an obedient servant, mirroring the will of God the Father, the character of Jesus, and the justice of the Holy Spirit.
There is so much good news here. The best part is that, despite the complex world we live in, following God is not complicated. As Moses says, “this commandment… is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea… No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
As Christians, we know that this word that Moses speaks of is the resurrected Jesus, the eternal Word of God, who relativizes all other words, all other gods. This Word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.
In a world filled with powers and principalities – little gods beyond our control – the gospel promises us the reign of God. Psalm 82 reminds us that our God is not putting up with the injustice and selfishness of these petty rulers. Despite all their pretentions of greatness, judgment is coming. They shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.
The gods of our world – the presidents and kings, the CEOs and venture capitalists, the influencers and pundits – they want us to believe that reality is whatever they say it is, and that their reign will be forever. But Psalm 82 assures us that all of these leaders stand under judgment. Moses’ words in Deuteronomy remind us that the true power behind the cosmos, the divine intelligence that was before the Big Bang, is nearer to us than we are to ourselves – in our mouths and in our hearts.
Our God is not far off in heaven or beyond the sea. Jesus is here to teach his people himself, to reign among us as our king, and to bring the judgment and righteousness of God to the petty gods who so arrogantly demand our unconditional allegiance.
As we face the complexities of our week – the workplace hierarchies, the political uncertainties, the economic pressures – let’s remember that these are not the final authorities over our life. The Word that Moses described as near to us, the resurrected Jesus, remains closer to us than our next breath.
The same God who holds the divine council accountable holds us securely. In a world of competing gods demanding our obedience, we serve the one true God who has triumphed over sin and death. Dwell in that victory. Invite others to experience it. The presence of our God is at work in everyone we meet, and the kingdom of God has come near.
The strangest part of this is that people say they are familiar with bible passages without ever actually reading them. Christians know about barns full of grain, about storing up treasures in heaven about serving Mammon. But never seem to actually apply these things/teachings to their own lives.
How strange it would be to meet a person with no pension fund, who wasn’t interested in money/prestige/power, who didn’t worship earthly things and people.
Do the opening lines “how long” call on Christ followers to take their rightful place as “children of God” — that is to be as gods — defending the oppressed? Perhaps, the “deliverance” arrives not by waiting ON God but by working WITH God [co-yoke-fellows] to see and right the wrongs around us … active gods not passive humans. And, yes, that begins with purging our own lives of dross … but it does not end there? The money changers [with their small tables called “banks”] must still be driven from the temple? Thanks for provoking us to act … which is what Psalm 82 seems bent on doing.