Who Lifts the Poor from the Dust and the Needy from the Ash Heap

I find the Psalm for this week irresistible. The call to praise and the proclamation of what God has done serves as a reminder of our call to thankfulness and graciousness in the face of this immeasurable gift:

Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord!

Mary sings a similar song, as does Hannah. These women, along with the Psalmist, sing of the power of God so stark, so staggering, and so alien. The words sneak up on us, swallowing us in their beauty, and then placing us in front of the mirror of this world.

This song does not come in the face of possibility, but in the face of impossibility. These are not the words of a victorious conqueror or of someone who has somehow climbed to the top of the ladder. These are the words of someone’s empty-handed prayer in the face of mountains bigger than they can climb and fears that threaten the web of faith. Hannah, a woman who was barren, gave birth to Samuel. She sings this song not when the priest affirms God will grant her request, not when she learns she is pregnant, but rather when she gives this child, whom she has prayed and nursed into existence, back to the Lord. Leaving him on the steps of the temple, Hannah sings.

Mary sings, too. Her barren cousin Elizabeth has just felt the life growing within her leap and blessed this teenage mother: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” In the face of this unbelievable promise comes an unbelievable song. Unbelievable is exactly right.

This Psalm, full of majesty and power, holds within it deep paradox. “He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.” Have you driven through the dusty neighborhoods that time and economy have forgotten? The poor sit nowhere near princes. The needy remain in the ash heap. There are couples who struggle to become pregnant, their barrenness a constant reminder of that yearning they can neither quell nor fill. Fertility treatments sometimes work, but they sometimes fail. The Psalm speaks of a beautiful world, but I’m not so sure it describes the one in which we live.

A glance at the daily news affirms how far our world is from a world where the poor are raised from dust and the needy from the ash heap. The dust and the ash heaps are so prevalent we almost don’t see them anymore. Invisible, the poor and the needy walk among us as ghosts, forgotten by us, causing us to question whether they have been forgotten by God.

Sometimes, we wonder if we have been forgotten by God. In our struggles, in the ash heaps of our lives, some left behind by others and some created by our own doing, we wonder if life will ever be the same, if we will ever feel near to God again. If we could only find a way to generate that closeness, that feeling that drew us into the presence of God, that taste of eternity that won’t let us forget we are part of something bigger, we would be okay.

Perhaps this is precisely what the Psalmist is doing. The days grow long, and they grow tiresome, and we grow weary. The promises, which seemed so tangible once upon a time, fade into a reality so far and alien to ours. The proclamation comes, reminding us of the absurdity of our God, who speaks creation into existence, who causes the elderly and the barren to bear children, who lifts the eyes of the poor and the needy to the truth that, in the kingdom of God, they are kings and queens, invited to the feast of all creation.

And we are reminded of how God decided to dwell among us. Christ came as an infant and turned the way in which we think the world works on its head; in the face of powerlessness and death, God’s power was revealed. In a world where the poor remain poor, Jesus proclaims them inheriting the kingdom of God. In a world where the hungry remain hungry, Jesus proclaims they will be fed. In a world where wealth is the measure of one’s success and debt the measure of one’s failure, God proclaims a different reality.

If God is not content with how our world works, in which those who have little have it removed from them and those with much have more added, I cannot help but wonder whether we ought to be content with it. Looking into the eyes of the poor and needy, we see a reflection of God. Looking into the eyes of the childless couple, we see a reflection of God speaking creation out of the deep. Wanting to turn away, reminding ourselves it isn’t true, Psalm 113 becomes a stark reminder of how God engages the world and how vastly different it is from we understand it.

This is not so much as an excuse to remove ourselves from the world, but an invitation to live more deeply into it. This is an invitation to our imaginations, of the world of possibility and hope. It is the world of hopes and dreams and of faith. It is a world that does not make much sense when juxtaposed with our world, but I have yet to be convinced that God cares about our capacity to make sense of him. The beauty of God is that it is not we who make sense of God, but God who makes sense of us.

Perhaps our attraction to it is because it speaks a truth that we long to hear that is somehow foreign and alien, but it is the truth that will not let us go. Who is like our God? Who is like the one who looks at nothing and says, “I can do something with that.” Who is like the one who looks at the poor and needy and says, “In my eyes, you are royalty.” Who is like the one who looks at people bound to their sin and says, “You are free?”

This is the beauty of the Psalm. It challenges you to look in the mirror of fear and see hope, to look into the abyss of despair and see new life. It is this promise that brings you into its embrace and will not let you go. It is this promise that instills in you a hunger that cannot be filled by your striving, success, or effort. It draws you back into it again and again, drawing you into the paradox of living in the world as though upside down. From the dust and the ash heap of humanity comes the promise of new life. So foreign and so alien because it is not a reality that you created; it is the reality that was created for you.

God does not simply look at you from on high, distant and aloof. God draws down, down, down, down to the dust of failure, down to the ash heap of human destruction, and brings it into new life. In the barrenness of your ability to save yourself, God brings you home, seating you among the kings and queens at the feast. Who, indeed, is like our God?