Years ago, I was in a lector workshop in which the leader summarized all the books of the Bible in less than five minutes. When he got to Samuel and Kings, he described it thus:

The Israelites said, “We want a king.”
God said, “Trust me, you don’t want a king.”
They said, “Everybody else has a king.
We want a king, too.”
God said, “Okay, I’ll give you a king—
but you won’t like him.”
And they didn’t.

They had some good kings and some bad ones and some flawed ones, because the kings were human and prone to mistakes.

Psalm 72, a prayer for God’s blessing on the king, tends to be thought of in Messianic terms: Jesus, the Messiah, has come into the world and everything’s going to be okay. It may not be quite that simple. Look what the psalmist expects the king to do: it is hoped that he will bring peace to God’s people and judgment to the wicked. He’s supposed to take pity on the poor and needy and rescue those who have no helper, and save the lives of the oppressed because they are precious in his eyes.

Think of our pope, Francis, who keeps pointing out that we need less divisive, triumphal rhetoric and more actual service to the poor. This is coming as rather a shock to some of the “princes of the Church,” but it’s a great relief to ordinary people, especially those who have been estranged from the church.

That responsibility to the poor is not just for the powerful leaders, but for each of us.

As Lucien Deiss wrote so well:

Priestly people, Kingly people, Holy people,
God’s chosen people, Sing praise to the Lord.

Priestly People, ©1965, by Lucien Deiss, WLP