Sermon for July 12th, 2026

Psalm 7:1-17 (OT p.491)

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning Cush, a Benjaminite. 1 O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me, 2 or like a lion they will tear me apart; they will drag me away, with no one to rescue.

3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, 4 if I have repaid my ally with harm or plundered my foe without cause, 5 then let the enemy pursue and overtake me, trample my life to the ground, and lay my soul in the dust. Selah

6 Rise up, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake, O my God; you have appointed a judgement. 7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered around you, and over it take your seat on high. 8 The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.

9 O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous, you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God. 10 God is my shield, who saves the upright in heart. 11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.

12 If one does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and strung his bow; 13 he has prepared his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 See how they conceive evil, and are pregnant with mischief, and bring forth lies. 15 They make a pit, digging it out, and fall into the hole that they have made. 16 Their mischief returns upon their own heads, and on their own heads their violence descends.

17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

Psalm 7: The Song of the Slandered Soul

The newspaper for a small town printed a controversial headline that read as follows: "Half of the city council are crooks." This threw the city into an uproar, and the council threatened to sue the newspaper for slander and libel unless they issued a retraction and an apology. The editor-in-chief of the paper agreed, and the next morning the newspaper ran the following headline: "Our Apologies: Half of the city council are NOT crooks."

I know a thing or two about slander, libel, and defamation. Somewhere on the internet, still live today, is a petition calling for my termination. Thankfully, that picture of me, smoking a cigar in my clergy collar, looking like some kind of Presbyterian mob-boss, has been taken down. But the petition is still there, sitting at 208 signatures, most of which are from people who have never set foot in El Paso. Everyone loves to sign a petition.

Most of you are probably well aware that I do enjoy a good cigar paired with a wee dram of scotch--that's hardly surprising for a Scottish-American Presbyterian Pastor. But the clergy collar in the picture tells me exactly when it was taken, because I only wear that once each year: On Ash Wednesday, when I go to Vitola's cigar lounge to do the imposition of ashes for people in our community, particularly for people who still cherish the ritual they grew up with, but who have fallen away from the church, or don't feel welcome in one. It's a deeply moving experience for me, and hopefully for those who participate in it as well.

So the picture itself is true... but the story it tells on the petition is false. That's how slander works--it rarely invents something completely new, but instead reframes and distorts the truth in self-serving ways. The story behind the petition stems from an incident a few years ago when our church had to fire two school employees... for good and ample reasons. Our governing board (the session) was fully aware of the situation, and was supportive of me throughout--but on the advice of our attorneys, we were limited in what we could say about it.

In that absence of information, supporters of the two former school employees (or possibly the employees themselves) started the petition, accusing me of all sorts of things, including financial impropriety. Ten months (and ten thousand dollars) later, a full review of our finances from an independent accounting firm uncovered what I already knew full well--the only "financial improprieties" originated from the employees who were fired. That vindication, however, came at a tremendous cost to the church, and at the end of the day, it didn't really alleviate all the frustration, all the division, all the damage we had gone through.

Three thousand years ago, a man wrote a song about exactly this. We just read it together.