Today’s Scripture Reading (August 3, 2019): Psalm 149 & 150
The
Defenestration of Prague in 1618 served as the initial incident that resulted
in the Thirty Years War, one of the most destructive Wars ever fought in Europe.
The war resulted in over eight million dead from May 1618 through May 1648 due
to the violence of the war, a famine that accompanied the conflict, and the
plague that was carried from place to place as the combatants moved about the
continent. Defenestration means the act of throwing something or someone out a
window. In the case of the Defenestration of Prague in 1618, it was three
Catholic advisors to the king who were tossed out of a third-floor window by
Protestant believers. All the victims survived their defenestration’s. But the
incident revealed the deep divide that existed in the Seventeenth Century
between the Catholic and the Protestant believers.
The Peace of
Augsburg (1555) had allowed for the city leaders or kings to decide what form
of Christianity would be practiced in their region. Either Roman Catholicism or
Lutheranism was legal under the direction of the civil leader of the area, the
king. In Bohemia, the Catholic monarchs Rudolf II and Matthias had allowed
their mostly Protestant population to continue to worship God through Lutheran
practices. But as the staunchly Catholic Ferdinand II waited in the wings for
his turn to rule, it became clear that the time of peace between the Protestant
people of Bohemia and their Catholic kings was coming to an end. The result of
the end of this peace was the Defenestration of Prague in 1618. A strongly
worded letter had come from the throne indicating that the Royal Family was
going to make it worship harder for the Protestant believers in Bohemia than
had been the reality under either Rudolph II or his successor Maximillian,
whose time on the throne was about to end. The Thirty Years War began as a
conflict between the Protestant believers and Catholic leaders of Bohemia, but
as each side called in reinforcements, it didn’t take long for the war to
involve most of Europe.
Maybe one of
the other side effects of the Thirty Years War involved this Psalm. Psalm 149
took significant hits as the Catholic leadership tried to use it to bolster
their hold on the people within their areas of control. Didn’t Psalm 149 say
that the people would take joy in the actions of their kings? The Psalm also
points toward the vengeance of God on those who are not faithful. The Catholic
kings took this as permission to wage war against the Protestants with the
blessing of God.
But there is
a problem with this reading. The Psalm talks about God’s blessing, not ours.
And even the King mentioned in verse 2 is more logically seen as God, when the
passage is taken in context, and not the earthly kings. In the poetic dualism
of the passage, the King corresponds to the Maker in the previous sentence.
Vengeance is God’s, not ours. And there is no evidence that God makes us tools
of that vengeance. The Bible does say that vengeance will come in the end, but
God seems willing to play the long game and wait for us to recognize his divine
nature. And his revenge is tempered with love and mercy; facets rarely
exhibited in our earthly retaliations.
In actuality,
even the divisions that we see in Christianity are false. In Christ, there can
be no division in his church. We may find the expression of our faith in
different ways, but we must all be followers Christ and of God first, expressing
our praise to our Maker and King.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 21
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