More than 100 times, the Psalms speak about “the wicked” as a particular type of people in the world. In this psalm the wicked speak mischief and deceit. They have ceased to act wisely or do good. They do not fear God nor do they reject evil, and they flatter themselves by thinking that even God won’t find out the bad things they have done. There is a clear message being sent, “Beware of wicked people.” In this biblical collection of prayers, it is perfectly fine to pray for the wicked to receive God’s punishment and to act as though you are God’s very own best friend.

I, for one, am somewhat suspect of such a clear distinction being drawn between God’s favorites and God’s “not so favorites.” Calling out wickedness is something to be done only with great caution and humility before God. It is way too easy to set up an “us versus them” polarity, particularly in our society that loves to place blame. Is it really any shock to us that Pat Robertson, once again, blamed the victim for the latest catastrophe, claiming that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of their making a pact with the devil generations ago? He’s been doing this throughout his career, claiming that he, as a Christian leader, has the absolute truth about who God likes and who God punishes. But other than act shocked again, what can we do?

Of course, many good people will send humanitarian aid to Haiti and her people. We will write checks to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and the Red Cross. Some will even volunteer to go and do rebuilding projects there. Christian pastors being interviewed on TV will backpedal away from Robertson’s comments – like Franklin Graham who chose to talk instead about God’s love for the Haitian people. But, I wonder, what will we do about the prevailing attitudes that make it plausible for Robertson to make such a blatantly prejudicial statement under the banner of Christian righteousness? It makes news this week, but will be casually forgotten – until the next time.

Sadly, I sometimes find myself embarrassed to be called a Christian. While the popular campfire song of my childhood taught me that Christians would be known by their love, in today’s polls, Christians are more likely to be identified by their prejudice or their hypocrisy. However, Robertson’s offensive comment is only the tip of a very deep iceberg. Throughout the centuries, religion in general and Christianity in particular, has been used to justify multiple wars, slavery, lynching, witch-burning, and just about every prejudice you can think of against race, gender, sexual preference, or socio-economic condition. Because our holy book condemns wickedness, some have claimed the authority to define that wickedness in the ways that they so choose, rather than listening to the full authority of scripture that speaks volumes about justice and mercy for all God’s people.

Which brings me back to the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible…. In these prayerful condemnations of the wicked and their ways, what exactly is going on? What can we learn from these particular pages of scripture about what God loves and what God condemns? In the Psalms, the wicked are described as deceitful, violent, arrogant, and oftentimes obnoxiously wealthy compared to the servants of God. But they can also be described as the “enemies” of the one doing the praying. Oftentimes, the petitioner requests either God’s protection from or God’s vengeance upon those who are the wicked. There seems to be a desire in these prayers to separate oneself apart as one of the righteous who both trusts God and fears God. And I have noticed in these prayers, almost in the very same breath, there are appeals to God’s steadfast love and mercy for ALL people, especially for those who take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings.

This says to me that the “wicked” are somewhat difficult to lump into any one particular category. Rather than the wicked being of a particular race, nationality, creed, or persuasion, the wicked are known by the negative character of their relationships with others or with God. They do not seek to build up relationships; rather, as this week’s Psalm says, they are “set on a way that is not good.” Though it takes a huge dose of humility to call out such evil since we can all be led astray by selfish temptations, I do believe that we have a moral obligation to start praying more like the prayers of the psalms – absolutely inclusive in the ways of God’s love, and yet driven to stand against the forces of evil in our world.

My fear is that, rather than speaking too much about sin and evil, we who found ourselves in the mainline church spotlight 50 to 75 years ago have spoken far too little, and now we have allowed the Pat Robertsons of the world to define these Christian terms for us. Certainly, it shows a faulty theological premise to jump to the conclusion that a natural disaster could only be interpreted as God’s means for punishing the wicked. But it was that same sort of logic that allowed slavery to persist in this country well beyond the time it had been outlawed elsewhere. The same logic has allowed prejudices to continue to grow and has allowed us to believe that we are in the right because other peoples’ sin must be far worse than our own. When we put our trust in what’s familiar rather than being challenged to do what’s good, we end up sabotaging the prophetic leaders who would tell us the truth and we allow dysfunctional relationship patterns to flourish in families, churches, and throughout our nation.

Have we actually forgotten how to relate well to one another? Have we forgotten how to think differently without hating each other for our differences? Have we ignored the concepts of acting wisely and doing good? Perhaps you are starting to think I’m going too far with this message. If that’s the case, just go home and watch a few reality shows to get where I’m going with this. I know that it’s painful. I absolutely hate them, but I got sucked into an episode of Supernanny the other night. It really is like watching a train wreck. You can see right off why the kids are such behavioral terrors on that show. The communication in the family is always horrible. Somewhere arrogance, violence, or lying is going to show up. There is no sense of appropriate discipline – it’s either none, or coercion, or all the power has been given to one person who wields it poorly. Good and evil are muddied to the point of being unrecognizable. And that’s just Supernanny – flip to some MTV collection of 20-somethings or a dating show and it’s a whole new level of scary.

The temptation has always been there to bury one’s head in the sand especially when those relationship problems hit close to home. That’s because it is hard to speak up in any situation and call out the wicked on their bad behaviors. We don’t want to be identified with those who make sweeping judgments about others. But the deceit, and arrogance, and violence will continue to get worse unless the silence of good people is broken. If the word Christian is now more synonymous with “hypocrite” than it is with “love,” it’s because we have allowed that to happen. We have failed to stay persistent in the struggle for justice, and now people are looking to places other than the church to feed their hunger for moral excellence.

But it is also true that breaking the silence will cost us. Songwriter Kyle Matthews has a song with wonderful lyrics about the Civil Rights marches in Alabama when people held hands, marched, and sang down the racial injustices and prejudices that had long brought tension to our nation. But in his song, it wasn’t the gunshots, but the “silence of good people” left ringing in their ears. The psalmists knew the danger in confronting wickedness. They prayed for God’s protection and help. They knew they would need it, and we will too. The powers of evil to twist people’s thinking and behavior are mighty. Confronting that power may cost us relationships, money, or our own well-being, but what we have to gain is a glimpse of God’s steadfast love for all people.

As a Pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted the prophets, but I bet he prayed the Psalms. It’s time for us to start praying, praying for the preciousness of God’s steadfast love which is our fountain of life, and praying for a renewed sense of justice lest we all be brought to despair by the escalation of human suffering and pain. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Amen.