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(See Christmas Day, Cycles A and B, for alternative approaches.)

Psalm 98 gets a lot of play in the lectionary cycles. It is the psalm for Christmas Day all three years of the lectionary, and the psalm for the Easter Vigil for all three years as well. It appears here on Easter 6 in Cycle B. It is the psalm for Proper 27/Pentecost 25/Ordinary Time 32 in Cycle C in the semi-continuous readings option and for Proper 28/Pentecost 26/Ordinary Time 33 in Cycle C for the paired reading option. Thus those wishing to preach from the psalms often will have to dig deeper each time 98 comes along.

For this sixth Sunday of Easter, verse 3b -- "All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God" -- connects with the theme of Christ being offered to the Gentiles, which occurs in the Acts lection for today.

But for those wishing to go in another direction, consider verse 1b: "His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory." This expression is a military one and is an image of God's power in battle (see Exodus 15:6 and Isaiah 52:10). The image of God's hand appears more than 250 times in the Bible, and often the point is that deliverance comes not because of human activity but because of God's.

Military images of God do not seem politically correct today, but we should not forget that one name of God that appears often in the Bible is Yahweh Sabaoth, usually translated as "Lord of Hosts" (235 times in the Old Testament). Note that although this is a composite name, nothing is taken away from either name by the linking of it to the other. Yahweh Sabaoth, is, first of all, fully Yahweh: the God who entered into covenant with Abraham and his seed. Yahweh Sabaoth is the God of Israel and the God who made the heavens and the earth.

The addition of Sabaoth takes nothing away from the name of God, but instead expands how God wished to be understood in those days. And Yahweh Sabaoth translates as "the one who will be armies."

This is not to suggest a sermon promoting actual warfare, but we can at least understand that it gives us room to talk about spiritual warfare. Being a Christian is a lot more than being a nice person. It also means fighting against the powers and principalities, in whatever new form they take in each new age.

Back in 1986, when the United Methodists were preparing a new hymnal, a great brouhaha arose in the church when the hymnal committee proposed leaving out the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers." The committee voted to delete it, feeling it was overly militaristic and was thus inconsistent with the church's goal of the eradication of war and the establishment of world peace.

The reaction of the rank and file in the church, however, eventually forced the committee to reverse this decision. Between mid-May, when the deletion was announced and July 1, the committee's office received over 11,000 pieces of mail, of which only 44 supported the committee's decision. So many phone calls came in about the matter that the staff was forced to make their outgoing calls on pay phones in the lobby! Six days later, the committee voted to restore the hymn.

Afterward, the committee studied the correspondence and discovered that the letters gave one or more of four reasons for keeping the hymn. One of those is significant here: that "militaristic metaphors within hymns should be construed in reference to spiritual warfare, which has a firm biblical base." (Carlton R. Young, Companion to The United Methodist Hymnal [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993], p. 136.)

-- S. P.