![The steeple of the Memorial Church](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-02/160725ChurchCalArt4.jpg?itok=rG9ZvXzh) # Nineteenth Sunday of Pentecost Sermon October 07, 2026 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By Professor Glen Pettigrove* *Chair of Philosophy, University of Glasgow* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Oct. 4, 2026)* The website where almost every academic job in the United Kingdom is posted is called jobs.ac.uk. I sometimes dream of opening the website and finding a job ad of the following sort: "Department seeks grumpy codger." Now, before you feel the need to point it out, I recognize that this is an unrealistic job ad to expect to find on jobs.ac.uk. After all, no one is going to use the word "codger" in a job ad. But it's not really the focus of the dream. It's really the grumpy bit that's central. Now I have to say, I don't know if I would be a competitive candidate for such a job were the ad to appear. Don't get me wrong. I think I have potential, but Aristotle pointed out that excellence requires more than merely potential. You need to have skills, and skills are developed through practice. And so far, I haven't found anyone who's willing to let me practice on them. But from what I see online and sometimes here on talk radio, it looks as though a number of other people aspired to such a job and have spent a fair bit of time practicing on social media. So again, my worry is I might not be a competitive candidate. Our psalmist, however, clearly thought that he had the skills. He does not merely lay claim to average aggravation or mundane madness. He claims to have a perfect hatred. Or, if you would prefer a more modern location, perhaps he would today lay claim to an epic fury. Now Psalm 139 has struck a number of scholars as a puzzling text. In fact, it has led many people to wonder whether we didn't have two hands involved in its crafting. The first two-thirds of the psalm are focused on praising God, God's knowledge, which is vast, God's presence, which is inescapable, and God's involvement in the psalmist's life, which has been true from the very beginning. And then suddenly, the psalmist changes tack and turns to, "God, wipe out your enemies." It feels a little bit like a non sequitur. My job this morning isn't to try and solve whether we have multiple authors or merely one. I want us to try and reflect for a moment on the psalm as it's come down to us through the years. If we read the psalm in its canonical form, what we find is the opening several verses saying, "God, you are wonderful." And then the last six verses, the psalm says, "I am yours, heart and soul." The way the psalmist expresses his devotion is by saying, "I hate your enemies, God, as much as you hate them." Now the psalmist isn't alone in seeing this kind of righteous anger as a model for our devotion. There are a number of other voices in the tradition that have embraced a similar picture, and this is something that makes sense. We are, after all, not just creatures who engage with evil intellectually and behaviorally. We also engage with it emotionally. Those emotional reactions are often reactions in the anger family, which includes hatred and resentment, indignation and contempt. While the tradition recognizes that's an important part of the human experience, subsequent voices in the tradition have been really uneasy with giving it the kind of enthusiastic endorsement the psalmist does. There are many voices who sound a cautionary note. I'm going to invite you to reflect with me on just two. They're the voices of James and if tradition gets the authorship of James right, James' brother, Jesus. James, in the passage you just heard, sums up his opposition to the psalmist's picture of devotion. Quite simply, he says, "Your anger does not perform God's righteousness." It's a tool not fit for the job. It doesn't bring about its aim. A couple of chapters later, James circles back around to this theme, and there he offers us another kind of reason, inviting us to reflect on someone who in one moment praises God and in the next moment curses someone made in God's image. He says, "Clearly, something in this picture is off." It's kind of like a spring that sometimes issues freshwater and sometimes issues brackish water. What will you get out of such a spring? Well, if you mix fresh water and brackish, you get brackish water, something unsuitable for drinking. You'll only get one product then rather than two. If we were to update James' metaphor, we might do so as follows. After seeing someone curse out a fellow bearer of God's image, they then turn to God and God's response is, "You want to kiss me with that mouth? No, thank you." It's an image that plays around with our disgust responses to a source that gives us something that could potentially be suitable to us, but also something that's not suitable and possibly gross. But that's not all that James does. He doesn't just reach for a disgust response. He also invites us in surrounding verses to see this as a point about the kind of character that we can hope to have. If we allow our character to go all in for this kind of devotion the psalmist identifies, the angry sort, it's going to shape what we see, it's going to influence what we care about, and it will make it hard for us to see and care about the good, at least in a way that God would find a blessing. Harvard Memorial Church ยท Professor Glen Pettigrove - Oct. 4, 2026 | Sunday Sermon There are other things that James says. I invite you to read through the rest of the epistle, but I promised you a second voice so let's turn to that second voice. It's the voice of Jesus in Matthew's gospel. About halfway through the fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel, Matthew introduces a series of sayings that are introduced with the formula, "You have heard that it was said," and then, "But I say to you." And in the first of these, Jesus likens being angry to murder, and even insulting another person doesn't come in for a hall pass. He covers a few more topics before circling back around to this theme in the last of the "You have heard it said, but I say to you" passages, and Matthew is really fond of ending with the same idea with which he began. In the last of the sayings, Jesus ups the ante, and Matthew clearly has Psalm 139 in view. He says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your friends and hate your enemies.' But I say to you, love your enemies." And in case you've missed the connection with Psalm 139, Matthew hammers the point home in the very final verse when he says: "Be perfect, not by hating perfectly, but be perfect as your heavenly parent is perfect by loving perfectly." Now I can't pretend that I am in a position to tell you how to go about satisfying that possibly hardest of commands. To love your enemy? Seriously? Jesus, have you seen that guy? I can't even pretend that I always even want to know how to meet that condition. Most days, I'd really rather sing with the psalmist. Some days, I just assume bypass the whole "God, you're wonderful" bit and get straight to the chorus of hating on our enemies. And yet, that's not the score that our conductor has picked out for us. The score he's chosen is a much harder one to sing. But when you find someone who's really mastered it, it's a wonder to behold. May we sing that song more faithfully today than we did yesterday. And tomorrow, may we sing it better still. ## Full Sunday Service ## See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/blog-categories/sunday-service) - [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)