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.