Psalm 2 conjures up the image of Aslan the Lion in the Chronicles of Narnia and those words so well used to describe him – “Course he isn’t safe, but he’s good.” Psalm 2 can be unsettling when our view of God is a tame one. It reminds us that the maker of all things can be ferocious when faced with the rebellion of people.
Psalm 2 has a decidedly Messianic tone to it once it gets to verse 6, and verse 7 should bring to mind the words spoken by the Father over Jesus at his baptism. Both the words in Psalm 6:7 and the words offered by God in the account of Jesus’ baptism that appear in the 3 synoptic gospels offer a type of commissioning, a visible recognition of the mantle of kingship placed on the Son by the Father. The Son is to rule over all.
Whilst we’re faced with a fierce God in Psalm 2, this commissioning of a Son who will rule sets up an inevitability – that injustice will be broken. The conspiring, scheming and plotting established at the beginning of the Psalm will have an end and that end will come in the form of the rule of the Son. Verse 12 of the Psalm connects this with anger and wrath and I’m sure the Psalmist had in mind something like the ferocious side of Aslan the lion – the lion who roars, but look what happens with that imagery in Revelation 5.
In Revelation 5 there is a scroll that needs to be opened and there seems to be nobody who can do it. Rev 5:5 presents the triumphant Lion of Judah. That lion reflects the ferocity of God in Psalm 2. In Rev 5:6 that Lion is now seen as the sacrificial lamb – Jesus on the cross. It’s the humility and love of the sacrifice God undertook on the cross for all of creation that ultimately judges and brings an end to injustice. It’s the slain lamb that is exalted and given all power. It’s the lamb that is given the throne. It follows the transition described of Jesus in Philippians 2:6-11 that we are called to imitate. Jesus is taken from glory to service and sacrifice and through this, to glorification and exaltation.
When injustice is faced with humility, love and self sacrifice it is judged and shown for what it is. The fact that God has undertaken the ultimate act of humility and love through the birth, life, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus means that true, lasting and all pervasive justice is inevitable no matter how unrelenting injustice might feel. It’s the light that pierces the darkness simply because it exists – that’s its nature. Where humility, love and self sacrifice are present, injustice is judged.
To illustrate, how often do we feel awful when we do something bad to someone and the response from them is a selfless act that expresses love for us in some way? I know that when that happens for me, I feel convicted and small. This is the wrath of the lamb not because the lamb seeks to crush us, but simply because its very nature judges all that is wrong. Its love overpowers injustice simply by being.
What does it mean for us? It means we have a hope that all things will be made right; that the darkness faced now for ourselves and throughout the world will have an end. Complete justice is inevitable. It also gives us a challenge. Faced with those things in the world that are wrong we often want to respond with force, power and might, but the image of the slain lamb and the cross offers something different – the most potent response to injustice is humility, love and self sacrifice. We can only truly develop those characteristics by drawing near to that lamb and allowing him to shape us – to strip away all those things in ourselves that are judged by His love and to be rebuilt into those things He embodies. We do so through prayer, repentance, remembrance of and participation in the body and blood of the lamb in Holy Communion and also through our actions where we take that inner and communal reality into the world around us through acts of humility, love and self sacrifice.
May we be reflections of the conquering lion who has become the lamb.
Read more of my reflections on the Psalms.
Here’s why I’m walking this journey through the Psalms.