We ought to give contemporary environmentalists a little slack for misreading Psalm 50.

After all, the Psalmist does give the strong impression that she is a member of the court, summoning the wicked – those who misuse and abuse the creation – to face the sternest and the highest ranking judge on the bench.

It isn’t unreasonable, that is, to picture the Psalmist as a kind of court-appointed notice- server, speaking not on her own but delivering to the accused a directive penned by the Divine Magistrate Herself to show up in court for the day of reckoning.

Furthermore, this notice-serving Psalmist makes abundantly clear that Her Honor isn’t at all happy with those who haven’t kept their part of the agreement – the covenant.

From the very beginning that’s the tone of the court order:

The Mighty One, the Most High, speaks and summons the whole earth, from the rising of the sun to its setting…

Our God comes and does not keep silence, before God is a devouring fire, all around God a mighty tempest.

God calls to the heavens above and to the earth, in order to judge God’s people.

Granted, the next couple of lines in the summons seem to make allowances for a special relationship between the Righteous Judge and those particular people of the agreement:

Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!

But it turns out that this special relationship only intensifies the judgment.

Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you.

That’s pretty harsh, pretty stern, pretty unrelenting and demanding.

Why? What’s the cause of the divine displeasure? What’s the bill of particulars?

The summons, as a matter of fact, lays them out. First, it’s hypocrisy – the covenant people recite the divine laws and repeat the words of the covenant but they live without discipline, they get chummy with thieves, they keep company with adulterers. Then it’s loose lips in other ways – they use their speech for evil and deceit, and for their own gain they slander their own family.

So the Righteous Judge states in the summons:

These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was someone just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you point by point. For those of you who are guilty of these charges, pay attention, because I will tear you into pieces, and there will be no one to save you.

What, then, are the indicted people to do?

Here’s where contemporary environmentalists probably make the understandable but crucial misinterpretation.

They probably think that the biblical and religious way of addressing the problems of global warming, and the fouling of land, air, and water, and the exploitation of the earth’s resources has to do with overcoming hypocrisy – to stop reciting all the right words but living wrongly, to start exercising very strict discipline about the use of the environment, to cease associating with the exploiters and polluters and adulterers of the earth, to halt all talking and tasking that ends up defaming and damaging our children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

Contemporary environmentalists probably think that’s the lesson to be learned from the 50th Psalm.

They probably think that it’s all a matter of making sacrifices in our lives that will please a harsh, stern, unrelenting, demanding, and most of all judging God.

But it turns out that isn’t what the summons is about.

Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. You can’t please me by bringing your sacrificial and burnt offerings before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds.

After all, God says, these things you would sacrifice to make things right between us are all mine from beginning to end.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine (not yours to sacrifice), the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you (so you would think you have to feed me), for the world and all that is in it is mine.

In short , God says there is nothing you can give up because you think it is yours in order to please God. You can’t satisfy the charges against you in the summons by sacrificing something that isn’t yours to begin with.

What then is the summons of Psalm 50 about? What are all the people of the earth, and particularly those who are people of the covenant, to do?

The requirement God expects of us is a sacrifice, but not a sacrifice in the way we usually think about sacrifices.

The Psalmist reports that we are summoned to the Mighty One, the Most High, to offer thanksgiving.

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.

Or to quote the Author of the summons:

Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me; to those who go the right way (those who live their lives giving thanks to the One who provides everything for everyone), I will show the salvation of God.

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What might that kind of reading of Psalm 50 mean practically?

Let me try a couple of examples, one that applies to personal life and the other to public and political life.

Assume that the consumption of oil products in combustion engines is a major contributor to global warming, to the pollution of air, land, and water, to the depletion of the earth’s resources for others now and for future generations. That isn’t a far-fetched assumption, is it?

Now further assume that the speed at which one drives a vehicle with a combustion engine has a direct correlation to the amount of oil-based fuel used and the amount of exhaust released into the atmosphere.

One could make the argument that a driver ought to drive no higher than the speed limit for self-interested reasons – e.g., to save money, or to sacrifice her or his time for money.

Or one could make the argument that a driver ought to drive no higher than the speed limit for the good of others – e.g., to lower in some small way the demand for gas and thus decrease the cost of fuel for others, or to decrease in some small way the amount of pollution entering the atmosphere, or to maximize in some small way that amount of oil available for others in the world or future generations. In this case, the driver is serving self-interest by saving money but sacrificing her or his time for others.

Or, following the summons of Psalm 50, the driver ought to recognize that the fuel purchased is ultimately not hers or his, but is a gift from the One to whom the whole earth belongs and determines to drive no higher than the speed limit as an expression of thanks to the giver of the fuel and lets this be a guide to the way she or he lives the other parts of life.

Something similar could be projected in the realm of public policy.

One could hold, for example, that public policies be adopted that would create strong self-serving incentives for drivers to follow the speed limits and disincentives for exceeding those limits (i.e., strict enforcement of the speed laws and high fines for violations). Here some degree of individual freedom would be preserved (the driver weighing the incentives and disincentives) and the common good (now and in the future) at least partially served by the reduction in fuel use, based on a limited notion of sacrifice for the sake of both self-interest and a larger good.

Or laws could be adopted that required vehicle manufacturers to produce cars and trucks that met higher standards for gas mileage, even if such production modifications meant an increase in the cost of vehicles and less capacity for such features as, say, quick acceleration. In this case, sacrifice would be required for the common good (now and in the future) on the part of the manufacturers and those drivers who are speeders.

A third and probably more radical public policy alternative might be considered that sought to shape a personal and public disposition in a society that is faced with depleting natural resources and increasing environmental threats toward an understanding of the earth’s resources as a common inheritance that, by definition, no one earned or could exclusively possess. Allocation for use of these resources, then, would require the employment of some democratic process beyond the artificial boundaries of individual, corporate, or national property – and a democratic process that allowed for everyone to give thanks for the use of the inheritance. It would be, in the words of the Psalmist, a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

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My guess is that all of these personal and public policy alternatives might not be all that acceptable to large parts of the populace. And that may account for our misreading of Psalm 50.

But I, at least, have to take note that in the Bible I’m using this Psalm is sub-titled “The Acceptable Sacrifice.” After reading it repeatedly, I think the sub-title gets it right.