As we turn to Psalm 8, let me present here a talk I gave a couple of years ago in chapel. I’m not sure what to add, so maybe it will be of use to you.
Out of the Mouth of Infants
“O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.” The Bible is a very surprising book. The more you read it, the more surprising it is. And few texts are more surprising than today’s psalm celebrating the stunning beauty and dignity of humankind.
Consider the surprising line “out of the mouth of babes and infants you have established strength.” What does it mean? I know we like kids, but come on! Actually, if we forget for a moment the sentimentality that surrounds very small children – the infants and babes – we realize that in fact they are deeply troubling beings. They are untidy in their persons and surroundings. Sloppy eaters. They smell bad, and they hardly ever make deadlines. Thanks to the invention of disposable diapers, they are a major factor in the pollution of the planet. You can never consult them for advice on your love life. Hardly the place to go when you want to build a foundation for anything, much less something as significant as God’s plan for defeating his enemies, whoever they are.
Of course, the psalmist knows that, and if he’s like the other composers of psalms in our Bible, he’s nobody’s fool and not given to sentimentality. He – or maybe she – knows very well that there is a still darker side, not to children but to the lives that some of them must lead. Indeed, most of the time when you see this pair “babes and infants” in the Old Testament it’s in the context of warfare. “Babes and infants” cry out in pain as the invaders pour over the city walls. Children, the aged, and the sick are the victims of invasion, famine, drought, and disease. While some ride in their SUVs from soccer game to piano lessons to gymnastics, with a quick stop at Pizza Hut thrown in, other children live different lives.
“Different lives” means that 91 of a thousand children born in the developing world – many of the 60 plus countries from which your fellow ACU students come – will die before the age of 5, while in the west the number is 9. The psalmist would not be surprised – though still dismayed as we no longer are – to see on the television news a few years ago the pictures of 10 year old boys toting guns in the civil war in Liberia. Or to hear of the children who live in the tombs around Cairo, or their brothers and sisters who pick through the trash in Manila. Or the children of New York and Dallas and Abilene whose parents cannot both feed them and provide them with medicine. And for the ancient Israelites, these would not be mere statistics but flesh and blood and bone and fat. Humankind. “What is humanity that you are mindful of him, a human being that you pay attention to him?”
As I say, the psalmist is not blind to all this. Surely the condition of children is proof enough that humankind is seriously flawed, and perhaps beyond redemption. So why talk so oddly about babes and infants? Because there is another possibility, another vision. People of faith recognize that God has not given over his world to the warlords and the billionaires. The powers that be will fade away – even the world’s last remaining superpower. To express this alternative vision, the psalm uses the language of divine warfare, language that began with the mythologies of the ancient Near East but in Israel came to be about not God’s fight with a sea monster, but his triumph over men and women, Pharaoh and Jezebel, who use their power and wealth only to accumulate more. The message of Scripture is that God will tear apart stone by stone the walls of fear and prejudice that diminish human dignity. And with the power of love, unchoked by pride, God will overwhelm his enemies by restoring to them and to us all the true depths of dignity he intended for us originally.
Nor is this all. In his book Ordinary Resurrections, Jonathan Kozol tells the story of Stephanie, a young girl from a poor neighborhood in the South Bronx. Raised by her single mother, she longs for security and safety. In response to Kozol’s question of what would make the world a better place, she says, “What would make the world better is God’s heart…. I know God’s heart is already in the world. But I would like it if he would … push the heart more into it. Not just halfway. Push it more!”
It’s a naïve way of putting it, corny almost. But still, that’s the vision. The psalmist sees it too. Humankind fills all the ecosystems ancient people know about – land, sky, and sea. And we engage all of creation responsibly, recognizing that our actions have consequences. We are responsible, as all entrusted with rule and crowned with glory and honor have to be. And the dignity of humankind is not just a set of empty platitudes, but a living, breathing reality that informs all we think and do and care about.
So the vision is more than just an idle dream, a vague pleasant-sounding utopia we can talk about in the comfort of our churches. It is a challenge too, a clarion call to care, to work, to sweat, to sacrifice, to make a difference. And it is our call as people, Jews and Christians and others, who take seriously the words of this psalm.
Let us see this vision. In those quiet moments when we are alone with God and ourselves, let us dream of a world in which no children go hungry or are beaten or ignored. Let us commit our lives and talents and skills – the wonderful things you have the luxury of studying at this place – to the realization of this dream. Let us dream of building this new reality, realizing this glorious vision, embracing this tomorrow of the soul. For then the words of Jesus will no longer be just words, but the way things are: “Let the children come to me.” And as we in awe whisper to each other, “What is humanity that you are mindful of him,” we hear from the mouths of the littlest of us we hear the grace-filled words, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”
Mark W. Hamilton
Graduate School of Theology