Monthly Archives: April 2024

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Easter 4 – Psalm 23

Oh my goodness – the 23rd Psalm is set for this week – what on earth am I going to find to say about it? Everyone knows it – indeed for many it might be the only bit of the Bible they do know. We all know that it is both lovely but also about funerals, and of course we all know how to sing it to Crimond. So what was it actually about, and why is it set for liturgical use during the Easter period? Let’s try to forget for a moment what we think we know about it, and see if any new insights come as we look at it afresh.

One interesting way in is to ask what it says about the relationship of the psalmist to his God. There are three different images, and it is worth unravelling them and looking at them separately. They first is God as caring shepherd. This is an image which is used extensively in the OT, often of kings or other leaders, who may in places be either good or bad. By the time of Jesus they did seem to have something of a negative image, or so we are often told, so Jesus, when describing himself as a shepherd, feels to need to explain that he is a good one. (Note for liturgy anoraks: in Eucharistic Prayer D in Common Worship God is described as a ‘good father to us all’. This term was used deliberately because increasingly we know that not all fathers are good, but that God is the perfect image of fatherhood, just as Jesus is the perfect image of shepherdhood, if that is a thing.) Good rulers in Israel were meant to embody all that was good about shepherding, with its implications of nurture, care, rescue and guidance. Ezekiel in particular decries bad shepherds, who are only interested in themselves, an image which we in this country understand only too well. The psalmist’s experience of God is completely positive.

The second image is guide to the wanderer. Part of the shepherding task involves both gathering wandering sheep, and leading them to the best places for their pasturage. ‘Still waters’ are literally ‘waters of rest’, where sheep, and not necessarily the water, can be still. ‘He restores my soul’ can mean that God restores my vitality, or simply that he refreshes me: ‘soul’ might simply mean ‘me’, as it often does in English today, bless my soul! The paths in which the shepherd leads the psalmist are the ones which lead towards happiness and blessing, rather than helping him to do the right things (although of course that might bring happiness, although possibly not). Even when that road lies through death, God still guides, and the psalmist need not be afraid. The Hebrew words for ‘rod’ and ‘staff’ are very different, and the two are used more than merely as poetic parallels. The rod is a studded club used offensively to drive away threatening animals or people, while a staff is a long walking stick to give support through weakness or tiredness. Both bring comfort if you know your shepherd has them, although the Hebrew could mean that they lead, rather than comfort.

Thirdly, God is seen as a gracious host. The image is probably from the Temple period when sacrifices could be followed by a communal banquet, particularly in times of great victory over enemies. Thanks and praise would be offered to God, and then the people would celebrate together with feasting, a kind of scaled up version of coffee and donuts after the morning service. It may even have been that the guests would be anointed as they sat down to feast, which would draw parallels to the anointing of Jesus. Whether defeated enemies would literally be present is doubtful, but the sense could be ‘in the face of persecution’ or in spite of it. And to ‘dwell’ in the Lord’s house could be better translated as ‘return’, expressing the hope that worshippers would be spared to return again and again to the Temple for as long as they lived. The psalmist is confident that year after year there will be plenty of good shepherding and righteous guidance to celebrate.

There are so many nuances, even in the image of the shepherd alone, for us to meditate on and celebrate. As we continue to celebrate the Easter period and all that was won for us through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the phrase ‘all other benefits of his passion’ comes to mind. There are plenty!

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Easter 3 – Psalm 4

I can remember a Churchwarden moaning about her troubled church, although the phrase is much more widely applicable, by saying ‘We don’t lament here, we just grizzle!’ She was absolutely right about the difference between the two. Lament form is a particular genre in the Psalms, and I’m sure we will get to one before long, which, like any good liturgy, takes people on a journey, in this case from bringing to God their troubles, and their feelings about them, but ending in a place of confidence and hope. Without that journey, and in particular its ending, it is just grizzling. Psalm 4 is officially an individual lament, but the confidence is so strongly present that it almost overshadows the rehearsal of the problems, which in any case are not specified, leading different scholars to speculate wildly on who ‘me’ (v.1) is, and what was up with him. I particularly enjoyed the suggestion that this is a prayer for rain, which seems wild beyond any evidence! But without that kind of information, it isn’t easy to exegete the Psalm.

Slightly more possible, though, is the suggestion that this is the prayer of someone who has been falsely accused, and then acquitted, but that there are still people hanging onto his guilt, no doubt saying things like ‘Well, there’s no smoke without fire …’ If that is the case, it might help explain why this is set for Easter. So the Psalm begins with a prayer for God’s v indication, and a rebuke on those still harbouring false impressions about him. The reference to ‘false gods’ in v.2 can better be translated ‘lies’, which would fit with this explanation of the psalmist’s situation. V.3 explains that if God has declared him innocent, there is no place for their belief in his guilt. The accusers are told either to ‘meditate on the goodness of God’ or, more likely, to think about their attitudes and search their hearts in the light of God’s forgiveness of their victim. This should lead them to sacrifices of repentance.

Then the psalmist’s appeal seems to shift from his opponents to his God, and, as is common in lament psalms, he expresses his pain at the treatment he is receiving from others. The word ‘many’ might refer to the recognition that his situation is not an isolated one, and that others, like him, are being hurt by the accusations of cruel people.

The situation resolves into hope, though, when the author prays, and hopes, for the kind of rejoicing which people know when there has been a successful harvest, which is seen as a sign of God’s blessing. This is more likely than to see this as a prayer for rain, although as I write that prayer is being abundantly answered in Sheffield! Finally the psalmist proves his confidence and trust in God by failing to let his troubles keep him tossing and turning at night, a lovely verse which explains this Psalm’s use in the office of Night Prayer or Compline.

This Psalm might, therefore, be seen as applicable to all those of us who, like our Lord, have been falsely accused, and who suffer from the cruel words, and even actions of those who continue to believe that we were in the wrong. In this resurrection season we might be reminded that although Jesus, executed as a criminal, was dramatically vindicated by God, who raised him to new life and reversed the effects of those who hated him, there are still those (in fact the vast majority) who still curse him, accuse him or even just ignore him. I’m not sure what more you can do to prove someone’s innocence than reversing their death penalty (and after it has already been carried out!) but the Bible’s answer is that those who pierced him will one day understand and mourn over what they have done (Rev 1:7) I find that this Psalm spurs me on again to pray for our careless world, and for those I know who continue to regard Jesus as of no account.

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Easter 2 – Low Sunday – Psalm 133

For many years it was our custom as a family to go each Easter to the Spring Harvest Festival, first in Prestatyn and later in Minehead or Skegness. This was a greatly anticipated week, and as time went by more and more people from our churches would form a party and make the journey. The teaching and worship were great, but equally exciting were the journeys to and from the holiday camps. Me driving our car with the family soon became me driving a minibus, and eventually us hiring a coach. The journeys would consist of joyful anticipation on the way there, and much singing of the newly-learnt worship songs on the way back. If you have been to such Christian festivals, and especially if they have become a traditional annual pilgrimage, you’ll get something of the feel of the Songs of Ascents in general, and this Psalm in particular. It’s about going to get blessed, and returning full of blessing. And it’s about doing it together.

It has been suggested that this Psalm begun its life as a proverb. Originally the words might have been something like:

How great and pleasant it is when brothers and sister live together in unity.
It is like precious oil on the head, which runs down on the beard. And it is like the dew of Hermon.

This proverb, extolling the virtues of unity, used two images, oil and dew, both of which were highly important commodities in Israel. Olive oil would have been used, often with added perfumes, in the home to moisturise and soften hard dry skin, and as a primitive kind of Brylcreem for the hair. The oil in v.2 isn’t ‘precious’ – that’s a mistranslation. But it is ‘good’ stuff. And dew was important during the summer months of very little rainfall to keep the land fertile. But, it has been suggested, this proverb mutated in its spiritual significance by the addition of two motifs which are less homely and domestic and more spiritual. The hairdressing lotion becomes anointing oil, and not for anyone: for Aaron himself, the original high priest. And the dew which famously fell on Mount Hermon, a snowcapped peak way up north on the border between Syria and Lebanon, now drenches the Temple in Jerusalem, some 125 miles away. Everyday necessities have become spiritual and liturgical blessings for the companies of people travelling to worship.

The final clause of v.3 is interesting. It describes the nature of the blessing as ‘life for evermore’. It is highly unlikely that this would have been understood as what Christians now call ‘eternal life’, or as an early belief in the continuation of life after death. More likely is that it referred either to the continuation of the family line, or continued peace and prosperity. Many OT texts describe one’s offspring as blessings from the Lord, and the result of a curse might be the discontinuation of one’s family line. And prosperity, in spite of our reluctance to swallow any kind of a ‘prosperity gospel’ in which God promises health wealth and happiness to  Christians, usually those who give financially to the particular televangelist in question, is nevertheless promised as a blessing throughout the OT. My take on this is that the promises by God of prospering are meant to be read corporately, but in our post-enlightenment world we hear them individually. I think God promises blessings to nations or groups who live in obedience to him, but we have turned that into an individualistic desire to get rich personally, which other materialists are keen to promote and ‘sell’.

But of course as Christians, and as Christians caught up in the celebration of Easter, we can perhaps see this as an example of Scripture speaking more than it knew at the time. We do believe that because of last week’s events, there can be ‘life for evermore’. That blessing is commanded or bestowed by God on those who live in unity, those who are on the journey together to worship, learn and finally break free from this life into eternity.