For those who want a change from the Gospel

Lent 3 – Psalm 19

So clearly does this Psalm fall into two different parts that it is easy to see why most scholars believe that two poems have been combined into one psalm. The two halves, v.1-6 and 7-14, contrast in their style, their subject matter, their meter, and probably their age. The first half is a hymn of praise to God through his creation, in which humans play no part at all, while the second is a celebration of the Torah or Law, and the benefits it brings to the individual. The first feels early, as it draws on some pictures from ancient mythology. When I left my second curacy (yes, I’m that old – we used to do two in those days, and they each lasted four years) my vicar invited me to preach a farewell sermon about what I had learnt from my time in that church. I chose this psalm as my reading, and reflected on what I had discovered about the different ways of knowing God and growing in discipleship, which reflected the two parts of my personality. The first half of the psalm is spacy, emotional and intuitive, what we might call ‘right brain’ stuff, while the second is logical and thoughtful. I felt that I had grown in both these aspects of my spirituality, and I encouraged people to embrace both in their knowing of God. We might prefer one over the other, but they are both a part of us. I tend to be logical and thoughtful, but there have been times when God has crept up on my from behind and mugged me emotionally, often to great effect.

So what does this psalm teach us about God and about how we know him? Firstly it speaks of his glory, which we can see through what he has made. It has been suggested that this text is a day-time counterpart to Psalm 8. There the psalmist meets God through the starry night sky, while here it is the blazing sun which declares his glory. Creation is silent, but it still speaks clearly of the Creator’s skill, wisdom and glory. This argument is later taken up by Paul in Romans 1, in attempting to answer the age old question ‘What about those who have never been told about God or the gospel?’ His answer, and the psalmist’s, is that just opening your eyes to the world around you should give you the message clearly that there is someone behind it who deserves both reverence and thanks. To fail to respond to creation by failing to respond to the Creator is to exalt humanity far above anywhere it has the right to be. This kind of arrogance leads to so much which is wrong with God’s world. It is significant that unlike in Ps 8 human beings get no mention in this hymn to the Creator, reminding us perhaps of our lowly station in the great scheme of things.

So how do we respond appropriately to such a glorious God? The final verse of the psalm is a prayer that our thoughts and words might be acceptable to God, and the verses which lead up to it flesh this out and celebrate the fact that God has told us how to please him and live in harmony with him, through the words of his Law. V.7-9 celebrate some of the qualities of the Law: it is right, trustworthy, pure, sure and radiant. In fact it is perfect. By heeding it we gain wisdom, joy, light and radiance of spirit. Then v.10-11 celebrate the beauty of the Law: this is no irksome set of regulations to stop us enjoying life, but rather the way to the best possible life. But then comes the awesome awareness that even with this resource behind us we can still live disobedient lives, either through hidden faults or deliberate sins. Therefore the final prayers for purity and help in the struggle against sin. It has been suggested that this is the main point of the psalm, and that the author has prefaced it with a few verses taken from a much longer creation poem in order to focus on God before homing in on his Law and its benefits.

Over the last week or so I have been studying a book and a doctoral thesis which have made fascinating reading. They concern the possibility that in our attempts to be attractive to the secular world some bits of the church may have drifted from their evangelical heritage, neglecting the Scriptures, the cross and in particular the need for salvation and holiness. Some current practices, for example contemporary song lyrics, are compared with the priorities of people like Wesley and Whitefield, and are found wanting. Instead we have created a gospel of unconditional love from a God whose sole purpose is to make me feel happy and loved. This Lent might be a good time to reflect on our own growth in holiness and the righteousness of God, who has made all things well.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Lent 2 – Psalm 22

Far be it from me to claim to be a real OT scholar, but when I read my usual commentary on this Psalm I found myself disagreeing with most of the suggestions which were given as to its origins and meaning. Part of the problem is that it falls into two very contrasting halves (only the second of which is set in our lectionary). So first of all there is the inevitable suggestion that two different Psalms, a lament and a song of praise, have at some stage been bunged together into one. While some psalms show evidence that this might have happened, I’m not convinced that this one does. In fact, even though the first 21 verses appear to form a song of lament, they are interspersed with verses of great hope and confidence, for example v.3, 9 and 14. In fact the whole thing seems to oscillate between terror and confidence.

This has led to another suggestion, that the Psalm is in fact a Psalm of thanksgiving, but that some verses are inserted to recall just what it was that God had delivered the psalmist from. If that is the case, I’m not sure the first two verses set the scene very effectively, or do justice to the overall mood of the Psalm. The way the suffering is described seems all too real and present to me. Another suggestion is that this was a liturgy used for a ceremony of ritual humiliation for the king, perhaps a bit like King Charles being stripped down to his undershirt at his coronation. But we have no evidence that such a ceremony was ever performed, or was part of any royal liturgy. In any case the Psalm describes something a bit worse than mere humiliation. And of course there are inevitably those who can’t see beyond the NT use of the Psalm by Jesus on  the cross, and see it as nothing more than a prophecy of the crucifixion. Readers will know by now what I think of that view, although it is easy to see why these no doubt well-known words sprang to Jesus’ lips as he died in agony.

So I’ll stick to my own interpretation of the Psalm, convincingly suggested to me many years ago by a friend who is a proper OT scholar, and then I’ll reflect on our own experiences in the light of that interpretation. I think it describes a city under siege, and the reactions of the people caught between hope and despair. The people fell themselves abandoned by God (v.2), they are mocked by their enemies, including verbally (we know this happened from 2 Kings 18). They feel surrounded and hemmed in (v.12-13, 16) and the famine caused by the siege is having its effects on people’s bodies (v.14-17). The attacking army is treating the situation as though they have already won (v.18), and are already planning the plunder which under Assyrian Law they are entitled to if they capture someone. Whether this is the siege of Jerusalem by Assyrian King Sennacherib in 710 BC we can’t be certain, but I’m convinced that the evidence fits this event.

So why the oscillation between lament and praise? I think what we have here is a Psalmist struggling to hold onto his faith and beliefs in the face of the trouble he was undergoing. He feels forsaken and abandoned (v.1-2), yet God is enthroned (v.3). He feels like a subhuman worm by the way his oppressors are treating him (v.6-8) and yet God brought him to birth and nurtured his beginnings. He is starving, frightened and desperately sick, yet God is not far from him (v.19) or so he prays. And then he breaks through this backwards and forwards and spends the rest of the Psalm reminding himself of what he knows to be true about God and his presence, his provision and his deliverance. Above all, he knows that in the end all the earth, including presumably those who are being so dreadful now, will turn and bow before him. A friend (a different one – I do have more than one) once said that there is a difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘real’. There are things we believe to be true, but they are not always real for us now. That doesn’t make them not true; it just means that at times we have to hold on to what we believe about God even if that doesn’t match our present experience. This Psalm, it seems to me, is a masterpiece of that kind of wrestling, that teeth-gritted determination to stick to the belief that God is good even when our experience says he’s evil, or worse, absent altogether. This Psalm validates our own wrestling and doubts. We may not believe that a lighthouse will appear and miraculously carry us  to shore if we follow it, but we do believe that God is good and will one day will win. O Lord, help our unbelief.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Lent 1 – Psalm 25

Well, didn’t I get told last week! Apologies for my sloppy exegesis of the Wheat and Tares parable – you deserve better from revjohnleachblog. I would just say in my defence, though, that I was actually writing about the Psalm, not the parable, and the fact is that we do live in churches which contain all sorts of different people, there for all sorts of reasons, pure and impure. Anyway, I hope to do better this week as we enter Lent and look at one of my fave Psalms, and one of my fave songs by Graham Kendrick based on it, which you can listen to here.

The Psalm falls fairly neatly into three parts, although the join between parts 2 and 3 is not easy to see accurately. V.1-7, the part which our lectionary gives us, is a prayer for God’s deliverance and help, v.8-14 list some of God’s attributes, and v.15-22 are a further series of petitions which begin with an expression of confidence in God. Interestingly the Psalm is an acrostic, with each verse starting alphabetically with a different Hebrew letter, although this is not exact, and the same discrepancies occur in Psalm 34, which has led some to attribute them to the same author, who clearly didn’t know his Hebrew alphabet. There is no clear evidence about dating or liturgical use, but some say it feels post-exilic, whatever that feels like. In terms of Psalm classification it is usually thought to be an individual lament, although it is noticeable that the troubles which the Psalmist faces are vague and general enough to suggest that it was written not out of some dire personal circumstances, but rather by a poet or liturgist for the use of others perhaps less skilled in wordcraft. So a shout out to our liturgists, who have used their considerable gifts to put words of beauty and power into our mouths to help us express our worship for God, and to deliver us from too many ‘just reallys’.

I know I should stay away from the Appendix, but it struck me reading this Psalm that in the NT there are a few examples of people who ask something from Jesus, but are not at all sure that he wants to give them what they are asking for, or misunderstand what he really wants for them. A few examples which quickly come to mind are the Samaritan woman, who wants water but doesn’t get the idea of the kind of water Jesus has in his gift, the centurion who considered himself unworthy of Jesus putting himself out, the blind man who isn’t sure whether or not Jesus really wants to heal him, and so on. It is interesting in the Psalm that the prayers for help, forgiveness and blessing form the bread of this sandwich, while the filling is a recital of God’s attributes. If we want God’s help, it seems, we need to understand who he is and what he offers. This Psalm reminds us of that.

So God is good and upright; he guides us when we need his help; he is always loving and faithful, promising prosperity (note: to those living out a relationship with him, not the general public); and he guides and instructs any humble enough to fear him and be interested. The affirmation of confidence in God in v.15 reminds us that actually he is the only real person to go to for help. Knowing all this about God really adds power to our prayers, and helps us to understand to whom we are praying, and what he might want for us.

One of the things people often say they want to do during Lent is to deepen their prayer lives. In the light of this Psalm, maybe one way to do that would simply be to know God better, so that we can understand what he wants and pray for it with more confidence. We might, for example, meditate on those people mentioned above who, in the gospels, need to learn what it is that Jesus wants to do for them. There is one lesson I have learnt recently. Each morning my wide and I pray together, but recently there have been some very very specific things for which we have prayed, and have seen God answer them quite dramatically and very quickly. That has made me think that God likes specific prayers, ones that we will know whether or not have been answered, as opposed to vague ones which are no doubt great but actually don’t put ourselves on the line or ask too much of God. I can remember at Morning Prayer one day in my local cathedral, the Dean saying ‘We pray for the human race’. I could imagine God saying back ‘Yes …?’ That’s just a small example, but it does seem that to pray better implies knowing better the one to whom we pray.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Sunday before Lent – Psalm 50

To go with our Gospel reading about the Transfiguration, we have today a Psalm about God appearing. As we are on the edge of the season of Lent, we are reminded that our hope is about more than losing weight due to abstention from chocolate or alcohol: it is about changing gear and taking time so that we might encounter God anew, as he comes to us in this holy season. The Psalm looks as though it comes from the Jerusalem Temple (v.2), and it has been suggested that it might date from the times of great reforms and renewals, either under Hezekiah (around 700 BC) or Josiah (around 660 BC). There is much speculation, most of it inconclusive, about which liturgical occasions it might have been used for.

The Psalm falls neatly into three parts. The first, which makes up our lectionary excerpt, is an introductory preface, which leads into a change of voice as God himself speaks to the people. This in turn is divided into two oracles, the first addressing ‘my people’ (v.7) and the second ‘the wicked’ (v.16). The subject matter of the two parts is around the same issue – appropriate worship – but the ideas are very different, depending on one’s relationship with God. First the worship-leaders announce that God is about to appear (v.1-6), then God addresses those whom he calls his own (v.7-15), and finally there are words of warning from God to the wicked (v.16-23). As such, the Psalm is usually classified as a ‘prophetic liturgy’ where priests and prophets work together in worship.

What is interesting, though, is the specific issue which is dealt with, that of sacrifice. It becomes clear that both groups are actually worshippers. The first group, God’s people, are apparently doing all the right things, but have perhaps misunderstood why. God doesn’t need their animal sacrifices. Some systems of religion believed that when they sacrificed they were offering food to their gods, who might otherwise go hungry. But Yahweh has all he needs and more, what he is looking for is the hearts behind the sacrifices. He wants his people to offer him thanks and acknowledge their need of his help in times of trouble. Both of these are things are neglected in our culture, and probably among those who are God’s people too. Paul in Romans one tells us that the culpable sins of the human race are to fail to acknowledge and honour God and to give him the thanks which he is due. People with thankful hearts and humble dependence are those whom God requires.

But the second group also appear to be worshippers, reciting God’s laws and taking his covenant on their lips. Their problem is that they are not living out what they profess. They won’t listen to God’s wisdom, but rather cast it behind them, a Hebrew phrase meaning to disregard or deliberately neglect. Rather they associate with thieves and adulterers, speak evilly, and lie and slander. Worse than that, they actually have come to believe that God doesn’t mind such behaviour, but rather than condoning it he is about to bring judgement for it.

If this Psalm does date from a time of renewal and reform, it is easy to see the two groups who need to know that he is about to appear. Some are indeed worshipping, but in a kind of self-sufficient way which fails to understand the nature of God’s demands on them, and fails to cry out to him instinctively, as the first port of call, in trouble. The second group are also saying the right stuff, but not backing it up with the ways they live.

I’ll leave you to make any comparisons to church life today, and how we might be falling short of God’s demands in various ways. But I was struck by the sense that it is not just the Transfiguration story which matches this Psalm, but also the parable of the wheat and weeds. The Church is a mixed economy, and like the farm workers we are not called to decide what should be there and what needs tearing out. The time for that will come, just as the time for judgement on Israel will come. But our task for now is to make sure that we are the wheat, not the weeds. Perhaps Lent can help us to do that.