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.