For those who want a change from the Gospel

Christmas 1/New Years Eve  –  Psalm 148

Psalm 148 is a pretty straightforward text, belonging to the genre of ‘Hymns’. It calls on all creation to worship God. There doesn’t seem to be any particular occasion at which it might have been used liturgically, so it’s the kind of hymn you’d find in the ‘general’ section of hymnbooks.

The Psalm falls neatly into two halves. V.1-6 are addressed to the heavenly world, and both physical and spiritual beings are invited to join in the song of praise. The angels as well as the solar system are told to worship. Then in v.7-14a the earthly world is addressed, including sea creatures, the weather, geographic features, animals and finally humans. In Hebrew thought the earthly and heavenly realms were thought to comprise the whole created world: In Gen 1:6-8 we see this double-decker system, with the addition here of the waters above the heavens, from which rain came.

But why this great paean of praise? The text gives us the reasons to praise God, again in two sections.  The heavenly world must praise God because he was the one who put them there in the first place, and who holds them all in place. The earthly realm, on the other hand, is called to praise because of who God is, rather than for what he has done. His name is exalted far above all that has been mentioned as part of his creation. We call this the ‘transcendence’ of God, that he is not merely a part of our world but sits separate and apart from it. That is why the incarnation is so crucial in Christian thinking: the God who is so far removed from our world nevertheless took on a human body and came to live among us to save us. This Christian spin on the Psalm takes us far beyond God’s action in the OT, where he ‘raised up a horn’ for his people, a common phrase which means that he gave them strength and power, often in the face of trouble or persecution. God hasn’t just helped us out, he has lived as one of us. It’s like the difference between me giving money to help refugees in some war-torn place, and my moving out there to help practically. That’s what Christmas celebrates – Emmanuel, God with us, not merely God helping us from afar.

So this Psalm forms a call to the whole created order to give God the praise he deserves, but I love a spin on worship which comes from a friend who is not just a professor of theology but also a concert pianist. He wrote a book called Voicing Creation’s Praise[1]in which he suggests that while all creation is called to join in the praise of God, it is only humans who are able consciously to articulate their praise. We alone have voices and minds capable of giving praise and thanks to God. So when we do worship, we are speaking or singing out the praises of all creation. We worship both with and on behalf of everything which fills our universe. We alone are given the privilege and responsibility of voicing creation’s praise. Throughout the Psalms and other poetic books the created world is summoned to praise, as in our Psalm today, but only humans can make that praise heard intelligibly. I love this idea because it reminds me of our responsibility to praise on behalf of the whole world, and, I guess, the opposite is true, that it is only humans who are able to voice the groans of frustration of a world being slowly destroyed yet, as the old song put it, straining on tiptoe to see the redemption of all things. As we enter a new year, with all its promise and uncertainty, this Psalm encourages us to do so with praise ringing in our hearts and coming from our mouths, not just for us, but for all of God’s world. Happy New Year!

[1] Begbie, Jeremy (1991) Voicing Creation’s Praise : Towards a theology of the Arts. London: T&T Clark.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Christmas Eve – Psalm 96

This Sunday is both Christmas Eve and Advent 4, so I have randomly picked one of the possible Psalms set for Christmas services, Psalm 96. Just as Christmas has so many possible themes to spur on our celebrations, so does this Psalm. Scholars would mostly agree that this is one of a genre called ‘Enthronement Psalms’, a celebration of the Kingship of Yahweh and an invitation to the whole world to come and worship him. It may well have been used at the Feast of Tabernacles, which was also the New Year festival, and it has been suggested that Israel held an annual Enthronement Ceremony at which Yahweh was ‘crowned’ once again while the people worshipped him as King, although there is no evidence, apart from these kinds of Psalm, that such ceremonies ever actually happened. The language of the nothingness of idols (v.5), the created world as a witness to God’s greatness (v.11-13) and the universal worship of God (v.7-10) are all reminiscent of themes from Isaiah 40 – 55, so the Psalm might have a post-exilic date, although it is equally possible that Isaiah used the language of the existing liturgy to shape his prophetic words, so once again, we just don’t know. But as the Church celebrates the incarnation of Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, it is easy to see how this text could help us in our worship.

The psalm falls neatly into two halves, with introductions in v.1-3 and 7-9, and the main sections in v.4-6 (the greatness of Yahweh and his superiority to idols) and 10-13 (a call to all creation and all nations to worship him). But for our purposes what is most significant are the reasons for this worship, and the purposes and activities of the King as he comes. Just have a look at the verbs of which the King is the subject. In no particular order …

He comes to reign. Reassurance in given that in an uncertain and violent world there is nothing going on over which God does not reign, nothing which is taking him by surprise or which is beyond his control. What that means for a captive Israel which needs ransoming from its addiction to revenge and ethnic cleansing, or a little town which lies anything but still this Christmas is something for our prayers and pondering, and I hope that worship-leaders this Christmas will not allow us just to sing the familiar words as though the war in the Holy Land is not happening. But even the atrocities being committed there are within the scope of God’s reign, and like so many before us we continue to cry out ‘How long, O Lord?’

He comes in glory. The splendour and majesty of our King far outweigh the worldly pomp of our idols, whether they are carved images, ideologies, or good old-fashioned Black Friday stuff. I hope that our worship reflects this splendour. I usually go to the Cathedral for Christmas Midnight Mass – that kind of service is what they do best.

He comes to save. For the last couple of weeks we have reflected on how God’s action in the past can fuel our faith for the future, and whether as non-Christians paying our annual visit to church for ‘the atmosphere’[1] and needing to come to faith, or whether those who feel that our nation and world are in greater need of salvation than ever before, we need to celebrate that fact that God, and God alone, can sort out our troubled lives and our disastrous world.

He comes to judge. Part of that reign and that salvation means that we have a King who confronts and defeats all that is evil, who destroys all that is destructive. We don’t tend to like the idea of judgement, although for Christians our Day of Judgement has already happened, on the day we knelt at the foot of the cross, turned from our sins and began to follow Christ, however imperfectly. But the idea of God casting down the Hitlers, Putins and Bin Ladens of this world and healing all the evil done in their names is one which resonates more strongly, and against which few would vote. This Christmas we are very conscious of the evil and helplessness of our world, but we have a God who alone is capable of bringing his anger against all who have deliberately set their hearts on what is destructive and cruel.

He comes to be worshipped. The one thing we can sing with a clear conscience this Christmas is ‘O come let us adore him’, a phrase which sums up this Psalm neatly. We may do so through teeth gritted with our own pain or the pain of the world, and we may do so whilst agonising over that ‘How long?’ question, but we need to sing it anyway, since we believe by faith that our God will come, and that he has come. His reign has already begun, but will come in all its fulness when the Father decides that the time is right. Until then we may worship with many many questions in our minds, but worship and celebrate we must. Have a happy and blessed Christmas.

[1] You might be interested in my Grove book How to Create Atmosphere in Worship which came out of the desire among non-churchgoers to come at Christmas because of the ‘atmosphere’. (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2020) www.grovebooks.co.uk

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Advent 3 –  Psalm 126

This week’s Psalm is one of a group entitles ‘The Songs of Ascents’ (Ps 120 – 134), and there has been much scholarly debate about what the term actually means. It has been suggested that this separate collection within the whole book of Psalms were liturgical songs used during the procession to the Temple for festivals. Some of them, like today’s, might have been antiphonal, with the people praying for God’s help (v.4) and the priests or Levites replying with a prophetic promise for the future (v.5-6). It has also been suggested that the farming allusions in those two final verses might place this Psalm as a Harvest Festival song. But this is all educated guesswork.

There is the common motif of giving thanks to God for a past deliverance (v.1), and allowing that to fuel hope and faith for the future, but I wonder whether there is something more going on here. The Psalm is most commonly dated after the return from exile, and it is most likely that the restoration of fortunes which is celebrated in v.1 was the release from captivity in Babylon and the return to their homeland. I know of a few churches (indeed I was once invited to become the vicar of one) which in the past had experienced great renewal and revival. One in particular had seen back in the 80s a dramatic move of God, with people literally coming in off the streets because God had spoken to them about their need to repent and turn to him. Services in the small town church were standing room only, and much social capital flowed from this revival to the town itself. But for whatever reasons – most likely because we don’t tend to train leaders to capture and build upon the fruits of renewal – that church is now an elderly shadow of its former self, living largely on nostalgia, vainly singing the same songs as were sung at the time in the attempt to recreate the glory days. Rightly or wrongly – I think rightly – I turned the job down. Breaking through nostalgia can be an almost impossible job.

If you read the post-exilic prophets, particularly Malachi, there seems to be a similar kind of ennui and listlessness about Israel. After the great days of Ezra and Nehemiah with their (literal) rebuilding projects, the nation seems to have settled down into a comfortable but lacklustre existence, where nominalism ruled and the glory days were fast becoming a fading memory. The third section of Isaiah, which is usually thought to date from this period, has the same feel about it, and contains prayer for God to ‘rend the heavens and come down’. Salvation in the past, nice though it was at the time, was not enough. They needed God to be present and active now.

This Psalm, then, might be both a warning against living in the past and also a spur to wanting more, and never being content with what God has done or given before. If so, the references to ‘dreaming’ and ‘laughter’ might be important here. What would God have to do for you or your church to bring the side-splitting peals of laughter which the Hebrew word refers to, an activity sadly lacking in the church since the glory days of the Toronto Blessing back in the 90s? What are your dreams for the future, and why would they bring this kind of overwhelming joy were they to be fulfilled? Maybe we could allow this Psalm to be like a mirror into which we look to see truly who we are. In invites us to admit to ourselves our stuckness in nostalgia for past times when God seemed far more active than he appears to be now. It invites us to change our prayer from ‘God – do it again!’ to ‘Lord, do a new thing!’ Maybe that would be a great Advent prayer for our churches.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Advent 2 – Psalm 85

This is going well! Two weeks into my new series on the Psalms set for each Sunday in the Lectionary, and I’ve hit a problem. As you know I often moan about the filleting out of passages from the readings, but this week they’ve filleted out the most important part of the Psalm. My fave commentary suggests that it is in three parts: v.1-3, v.4-7, and v.8-13. The first is a reminder of something God has done in the past, the second, which we’re not supposed to read, is a lament and a cry for God’s help in the present in the light of what he has done in the past, and the third is a prophetic oracle which provides God’s answer to part 2. So take away the middle part, and the central key to the text has disappeared. So let’s be a bit more grown up about it and look at the Psalm as a whole.

The first thing to say is that we really don’t know anything about the historical situations to which it refers. It might be that the restoration of the people’s fortunes which is celebrated in the first section is the rescue from the Babylonian exile. The fact that the language is reminiscent of Isaiah 40 might be significant. But we can’t know that for certain. Even if that does place the Psalm in the post-exilic period, it is not easy to see from what calamity the people are now seeking God’s help in the middle section. And neither do we know what the promised salvation looked like, or even whether it ever came.

This somewhat vague reading of the Psalm has led some to suggest that it might not, in fact, be attached to a particular historical situation, but might be a general appeal for blessing in the light of past blessings. Some have suggested that it might have been used as a New Year liturgy, which recalls what God has done for the nation in the past, and prays for his blessings to continue into the year to come. But if this is the case, v.4-5 suggest a bit more than just a blessing for the future. God has clearly been seen as angry with the people for some reason. Another possible setting for the Psalm, based around v.12, is that it might have been a Harvest Festival text, celebrating good harvests in the past, but perhaps coming out of a period of low yields, which would have suggested God’s displeasure. At the end of the day, we just don’t know.

So with this somewhat agnostic approach to the Psalm, how might it still speak to us, and why was it chosen for the Advent season? It might not reveal much about its Sitz-im-Leben (the theological term meaning ‘setting in life’) but it does reveal much about the God whom we still serve today. At all times, but particularly during Advent, we need to know that God has acted in the past, that we desperately need him to act in the present, and that he promises to act in the future.

It’s good, as we celebrate Advent as the start of the new Church year, to think back and to count our blessings, as the old hymn tells us, in the hope that we’ll be surprised by what the Lord has done. It’s so easy to take God for granted, and what better time than the start of a year to think back and give thanks for what we have seen God doing over the past months? Fans of Ignatian spirituality will be familiar with the discipline of Examen, where we take time each evening to look back with gratitude for what we have experienced of God during the day. Perhaps this Psalm encourages to conduct an annual Examen.

This in turn reminds us that we do actually need God, in a world where busyness and human arrogance can help us to forget that fact. Advent as a period of penitence encourages us to admit our need of God. Our vicar often reminds us, in introducing the penitential section of the Eucharist, that this is not about heaping guilt and shame on ourselves, and he is right. But it is a time for bringing to God the guilt and shame we already have, so that we can be freed from it.

Finally Advent invites us to hope and pray for the coming of Jesus as King to banish all that is evil and destructive in our world, to hold on to the certainty that ‘The Lord will indeed give us what is good’ (v.12). This psalm is a great one for helping us to do all these three things.