When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
   and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
   you have put all things under their feet,
   all sheep and oxen,
   and also the beasts of the field,
   the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
   whatever passes along the paths of the seas
      Psalm 8.3-8

"What are human beings?" can be a question about the meaning of my life or of human life in general. We find it impossible to ask these questions in isolation from each other. We can read Psalm 8 in both ways. The superscription, "A Psalm of David", cues us to read David's narrative into the psalm. Now that he is king and has "dominion" over his "enemies" and looks up to the sky, he may recall his days as a shepherd boy who spent nights outdoor gazing at the stars, and David must be marveling at his extraordinary rise. Thus read, the psalm is a song of thanksgiving. Alternatively, we can pick up the allusion to Genesis 1, that human beings have "dominion over the works of [God's] hands", and we have a question of human destiny. The answer is equally confident. Indeed, the question is loaded: "what are human beings that you are mindful of them... [and] care for them?"
 
We may not share the confident and optimistic sentiment. We wonder what David would think at the end of his life, after the adulterous affair with Bathsheba, murder of her husband, and the coup by his son Absalom. Surrounded by wars, injustice, environmental abuse, and with genocides abounding in recent history, we find the idea of "dominion" suspicious and human glory, whether we consider the human oppressor or the oppressed, ludicrous.
 
The Bible does not share the easy confidence either. Psalm 144.3 loads the question differently: "what are human beings that you regard them?... they are like a breath,... a passing shadow". Job turns the question on its head: "what are human beings... that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment? Will you not... let me alone?" (Job 17.17-19).
 
Hebrews both insist on human glory and resist the easy optimism. It rephrases Psalm 8.5: "You have made them for a while lower than angels". It demotes us from a royal position second to God only, seemingly against the idea of glory and dominion. It is actually lamenting the loss of human glory. It is determined that the loss is not supposed to be so, but only temporary, it uses the phrase "for a [little] while lower", not "a little lower". This confidence is based on the narrative of another king, "Jesus, who also for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory... because of the sufferings of death", consequently "God, ... in bringing many children to glory,... make[s] the pioneer of their salvation [=Jesus] perfect through sufferings" (Hebrews 2.5-13).
 
We can re-read the psalm. Indeed we are meant for glory, a glory not inherent in us but given by God through a calling, something to be achieved, and the calling is indeed the exercise of royal dominion. However, the concept of dominion has to be understood in the pattern of Jesus. Just as Jesus' resurrection is "the first fruits of those who have died" (1 Corinthians 15.20), so our restoration to glory also pioneers a cosmic liberation ("the creation waits with eager longing... [to] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God"-Romans 8.19-21). This is an overwhelming thought. The converse, though, is sobering. Jesus our king and pioneer serves and dies, and that is the intended pattern for Adam, and therefore us, the image of God and lord of the earth.

Contributed by Hon-Wai
Sunday December 5, 2010
Liturgical Year A Week 2
Sunday Gospel reading:
Second Sunday in Advent