Shalom, Your Majesty

When the Kings Begin to Sing

All the kings of the earth will praise you, O Lord.

— Psalm 138

We've been thinking lately about shalom: the peace of God that is whole, complete and rightly aligned.

And the readings have kept leading us back to a remarkably simple place.

Listen.

Look.

Lift up your eyes.

Depend upon God.

Psalm 124 took that dependence almost to its frightening conclusion. If the Lord had not been on our side, the waters would have overwhelmed us. We don't ultimately possess the resources to save ourselves. Our help is in the Lord.

And now Psalm 138 gives us a remarkable picture of where all of this may eventually lead:

“All the kings of the earth will praise you, O Lord.”

All of them.

I've been thinking about what that would actually mean.

Kings don't live in isolation. Neither do presidents, prime ministers, governors, pastors, teachers, employers, parents, celebrities or anybody else with influence. Human beings pay enormous attention to what the people around us are doing, particularly people whose approval affects our security.

We like to think our convictions are entirely our own. Sometimes they are. But we're also human.

We notice what gets rewarded.

We notice what gets punished.

We discover which opinions make the room warmer toward us and which ones make it colder. We learn what might help us get the promotion, preserve the friendship, remain welcome in the group or simply be left alone. Even people who consider themselves principled, independent thinkers are susceptible to it.

I certainly am.

That's not necessarily a cynical observation. It's an admission about human nature. Children test boundaries to discover what the adults around them will tolerate. Adults become considerably more sophisticated about it, but we still notice the boundaries. We still calculate consequences.

Perhaps acknowledging that is one way we become freer from it.

So imagine what Psalm 138 is describing.

Not one king praising God while the neighboring king laughs at him. Not a courageous little minority standing against the prevailing culture.

All the kings of the earth.

What happens downstream from that?

If every center of earthly authority suddenly acknowledges an authority above itself, the social incentives change dramatically. The ruler bows, and somebody watching the ruler begins to wonder whether perhaps he should bow too. The influential person speaks differently, and the people influenced by her begin speaking differently. What begins among kings moves through institutions, communities, families and eventually individuals.

Some people would undoubtedly follow along merely because everyone else was doing it.

Would that make the whole thing worthless?

I'm not sure it would.

God has always worked through ordinary human behavior. Sometimes we begin doing something for reasons that aren't particularly profound and discover the meaning later. A child prays because his parents pray. Someone goes to church because a friend invited her. A person serves because everybody else in the group signed up. Habit sometimes precedes conviction.

Perhaps praise can too.

But there's another side of this that I don't want to escape.

If I acknowledge how powerfully other people's behavior influences me, then I also have to acknowledge that my behavior influences somebody else.

I'm part of somebody's environment.

What do I make easier for the people around me? Contempt or curiosity? Fear or confidence? Ridicule or humility? Retaliation or reconciliation? Do people become more peaceful after spending time with me, or do I give them another reason to become angry?

Suddenly the kings aren't safely off somewhere in Washington, London or Beijing.

The question has come home again.

Psalm 138 imagines a world in which earthly power finally recognizes where real power resides. The kings hear the words of the Lord, and they sing of His ways.

And perhaps, eventually, everybody else begins singing too.

What kind of world emerges if enough people really do begin looking, listening and lifting their eyes toward the same God? What happens when the powerful themselves pursue righteousness rather than merely demanding it from everybody else?

Perhaps we finally begin approaching that word we've been following through these readings.

Shalom.

Things made right. Things brought into alignment. Justice without vengeance. Righteousness without self-righteousness. Peace that doesn't merely suppress conflict but actually heals what caused it.

Psalm 138 sees the kings getting there someday.

And if even kings can learn to bow, there's probably hope for the rest of us.

Shalom, Your Majesty.