August 10 2014
Psalm 85:9-14
Brookdale
Today I’d like to reflect on a verse from the responsorial psalm: “Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss.” Sometimes things seem to go in one ear and out the other, without affecting us very deeply. One Sunday, maybe twenty-five years ago, I was attending Mass at Cornell, sitting on a chair in Annabelle Taylor Hall. During the responsorial psalm, I heard these words—which I had no doubt heard and read many times before—but on that day they hit like a blow. I almost fell off my chair. I didn’t even know why they had so affected me, but it was clearly important to find out. So today I’ll tell you where I am with that.
Psalm 85 has three parts. The first part recalls a time when God had mercy on his people, forgave them, and restored their fortunes, but it is in the nature of a lament, because clearly the people are in trouble now and God isn’t helping them. The second part begs God to abandon his wrath and have mercy on his people. The third part, from which today’s reading is taken, presents a picture of how lovely things will be when God does restore the fortunes of his people. In this part, various virtues are personified as courtiers in God’s court. Kindness, truth, justice, and peace: they’ll all be present, and everything will be harmonious.
But look more closely at how they are paired: kindness and truth, then justice and peace. In each of these pairs of virtues there is one that we might call “hard” and one that is “soft,” for want of better terms. The hard virtues, truth and justice, can be uncomfortable; they challenge us to give up something we want or to do something we might not want to do: no self-serving lies, no cheating to benefit yourself. By contrast, peace and kindness are relaxed, benevolent virtues. Who doesn’t prefer peace to war? Who doesn’t enjoy kindness?
“Kindness and truth will meet.” I’m assuming that kindness is a translation of the Hebrew hesed, which means compassionate love and is a key attribute of God. Pope Francis often uses the word “mercy” for this concept. The psalm makes it sound so easy, yet kindness and truth are often in conflict. To take a trivial example, do I look fat in these pants [this dress]? There are times when compassion tempts us to fudge the truth, which is sometimes good and sometimes not. A friend of mine once taught college math, and a mutual friend, John, was one of his students. John did not do well in the course, and his grade in the final exam was clearly below a D. My friend was in agony and desperately wanted to give John a passing grade, but in the end he gave him a truthful grade. John was very happy. He needed to flunk math so his father would let him study music; he eventually became a very successful organist and choirmaster.
“Justice and peace will kiss.” Here is another pair of virtues that can be in conflict. The early union movement in this country introduced conflict, not peace, when it fought for workers’ rights, but the conflict was necessary for justice. Our terrible civil war freed the slaves. When I pointed out to a friend that peace and justice are often in conflict, she replied that peace will happen when there is justice. In other words, justice has priority. But sometimes peace has to come first. I think of the genius of Gandhi and Martin Luther King to work for justice with the technique Gandhi called active non-resistance. And of the reconciliation efforts in South Africa and Ruanda, which emphasized peace at the expense of what most would consider justice.
For me, this little verse in Psalm 85 is a wonderful promise that compassion and truth are ultimately compatible, as are justice and peace. That the hard virtues, which typically demand self-discipline, are compatible with the soft virtues, which encourage me to relax and respond flexibly and with love. The verse seems to promise not so much a compromise as a perfect harmony under God. May it be so.