Tag Archives: Psalms

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.

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Easter Sunday – Psalm 114

For some reason the Psalm set for the main Easter Sunday service is the same as that for Palm Sunday last week, so I could have told you simply to go back and reread last week’s blog. However that feels like cheating, so instead I have chosen an alternative Easter Day Psalm, Ps 114. In many versions, including the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint, Psalms 114 and 155 form a single text, but the subject matter suggests little in the way of a connection, so it is probably correct to think of each of these Psalms as originally independent. Like Ps 118 last week, 114 is a part of the collection known as the Egyptian Hallel, and this one particularly expresses praise for the mighty deliverance from slavery in Egypt, an event which according to the NT prefigures the deliverance won for the human race by the cross and resurrection of Christ. Scholars disagree (as they often do!) about the dating of this Psalm, or when it might originally have been used liturgically.

The Psalm falls neatly into four two-verse sections, and although the overall sentiments are clear, the text is not without its interpretative difficulties. V.1-2 are clearly a reference to the Exodus from Egypt, and the reference to ‘people of foreign tongue’ is both a statement of fact, but also elsewhere in the OT implies not just foreigners but foreigners hostile to Israel, which of course the Egyptians were. V.2 is more difficult: Judah did indeed become (or did house) Yahweh’s sanctuary, so this might be a reference to the Jerusalem Temple. However if this is the interpretation the parallelism doesn’t quite work: the whole point about Israel as opposed to Judah was precisely that it did not contain the Temple, but rather two rival sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, which were perceived as huge mistakes and stumbling blocks to the Northern Kingdom. So it may be better to translate v.2 as Judah became his holy people, as did the Northerners of Israel. The NT, of course, has no need for a Temple, but rather sees Christians as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which would provide a good parallel for this understanding of the Jewish nation.

V.3-4 take us back to the actual mechanism of God’s rescue of his people, although again interpretation is difficult. The reference to the Red Sea seems clear, and may refer back to the common Babylonian creation myth in which Marduk, the god, defeats Tiamat the sea-monster and cuts her body in two halves, creating the heavens and the earth from the two parts. Other OT passages use this allusion (without of course actually believing a word of it), but the contrast here is significant. Yahweh has no need to engage in a prolonged struggle against the Sea: he simply appears and the Sea flees before him. The skipping mountains present a further problem. In Deutero-Isaiah nature dances around to celebrate the return of the exiles from Babylon, but here it seems, particularly in the context of v.7, that the skipping is about terror, not celebration. Perhaps this is a reference to the firework display on My Sinai, when the Law was given amidst thunder and lightning, but this is by no means clear.

Even the Psalmist doesn’t appear to be clear about this physical movement, asking in v.5-6 two rhetorical questions about why exactly the sea and the mountains were so active. They are not answered, but the Psalm ends with a further exhortation to the created world to tremble in awe at the presence of Yahweh. Water appears again as the opening of the Red Sea and the River Jordan, events at either end of the Exodus journey sit like brackets around another watery incident, the miraculous spring of water at Kadesh, a story which perhaps sums up and symbolises all God’s provision for the people during their 40 year journey.

Well, all very fascinating, I’m sure you’ll agree, but so what? One insight came to me whilst meditating this week on the Passion Narratives, which is reflected in this Psalm of celebration of God’s mighty deliverance. It has to do with the very physical nature of the passion and resurrection. On Palm Sunday Luke tells us that if human praise could be silenced the rocks and stones would cry out to replace it. A fig tree withers at Jesus’ curse. The sun refuses to shine while Jesus is dying on the cross; Matthew has the ground cracking open and the dead rising from their graves, and the Temple veil is ripped in half. We think of the death of Jesus as for our salvation, and it is, but we often forget the way in which the created world is affected by it, and the manifestations of victory in the physical realm. In a world obsessed with saving the planet from climate change and the effects of human activity, this Psalm gives us a healthy reminder that our world is not just somewhere we live, but an active player in the drama of redemption. We look for a new heavens and a new Earth, and Easter kindles in us hope for that time.

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Palm Sunday – Psalm 118

We have become familiar with the idea that the book of Psalms as we have it contains some different collections – we explored, for example, the ‘Songs of Ascents’ here. Today’s Psalm is the final one of another group, Ps 113-118, known collectively as the ‘Egyptian Hallel’. Hallel means ‘praise’ (as in ‘Hallelu – Jah’ – ‘Praise the Lord’, and the Egyptian bit is about a remembrance and celebration of the rescue from Egypt, the exodus. This is particularly clear in Ps 114, but it is not a big stretch to see the others in this collection reflecting on the power of God and his rescue of Israel from slavery and poverty in Egypt. Not surprisingly, therefore, scholars have suggested that these Psalms had their liturgical use particularly at the Passover, and it seems that Ps 113 and 114 would have been sung before the Passover meal, and Psalms 115-118 at the end. So when the Gospels tell us that Jesus and his disciples sung ‘the hymn’ before heading off to the Mount of Olives, it could well be that Psalm 118 was the last Psalm Jesus sung before his death.

In its form it is a mixture of corporate (v.1-4) and individual (the rest) thanksgiving. The whole community is invited to praise, but then individual reasons for that praise are enumerated. Hard pressed and overwhelmed people find deliverance in God, and celebration ensues. The hymn ends with the declaration of blessing (‘we’ would probably be the priests who blessed all pilgrims to the Holy City as they entered the precincts), and there is the mention of a sacred procession, which provides the link between the Psalm and the Christian Palm Sunday, although a less obvious one with the Passover meal. The Psalm ends with further words of praise to God for all his goodness to his people.

In the light of this, we might wonder what these words meant to Jesus as he sung them on the eve of his arrest, torture and death. We can understand that in extremis Jesus appropriately cried out in the words of Psalm 22 ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ But what might it have felt like to use these words of praise and thanksgiving for God’s deliverance, knowing that actually abandonment was what it was going to feel like? How did it feel to give thanks to God for past deliverance while his heart was breaking for what was to follow immediately? How did it fit with the prayer of Gethsemane, with being betrayed, denied and deserted by those closest to him? This in turn leads onto some fascinating questions about liturgy.

As many readers will know, I am in the final stages of doctoral research into Anglican churches which don’t like or use Anglican liturgy. My interviews with church leaders have revealed some fascinating and largely negative attitudes towards set liturgy, often as opposed to the supposed ‘freedom’ of singing the worship songs which have largely replaced liturgical worship in most of the churches I visited. Liturgy, I was told again and again, would simply not ‘connect’ with people, and particularly with young people. It is ‘inauthentic’, unlike the praise which is meant to spring unbidden from within our hearts. In the light of Jesus’ experience of using the text set for the day, it seems to be the ultimate example of disconnection. To be given words of praise to use when one’s heart is breaking seems as bad as being given miserable, dirgy Psalms to sing when one ought to be abounding with praise and worship.

But here’s the rub – maybe liturgy is deliberately designed for those moments of disconnect. Sometimes the words put into our mouths by liturgical worship do try to express how we’re feeling. Next week many of us will be declaring ‘Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia’, and hopefully we’ll be feeling it too. But maybe there are other times when liturgy is there not to tell us what we’re feeling, but rather what is true in spite of how we’re feeling. Did Jesus experience those words as rubbing his nose in the agony he was about to undergo? Or maybe were they precious truths to hold on to, to sustain him during his arrest, trial and torture? I’ve mentioned before a friend who drew the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘true’, identifying the fact that there are things which we believe are true even if we’re not experiencing them as real right at this moment. Set liturgy can provide reminders of truth for which we’re still waiting, or even for which we are at the point of giving up waiting. Maybe a key to using it well is to ask not how it is making us feel, but rather what truths is it telling us, whatever we may happen to be feeling.

Lectionary Psalms

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Mothering Sunday – Psalm 127

Now that we’re all woke up it has become almost a cliché to say that Mothers’ Day can be a very difficult day for many people, so while some of us are busy celebrating mums who love us, of course others will be missing those who have died, or grieving for difficult or even estranged relationships, or desperately wishing that they could become mums themselves. Today really is a minefield, and our thoughts and prayers need to be sensitive to whose who have different things to say to God. I have chosen from the options Psalm 127, another of the Psalms of Ascent which we have looked at previously, perhaps used during a pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple for a major festival. Psalm 127 is also a Wisdom Psalm, containing teaching on how to live well. Whilst it seemingly has two unconnected parts, v.1-2 about the need for reliance on God if we are to be successful and v.3-5 about the blessings of children, there may be an interesting precedent for linking these two themes. We have a song from the Sumerian empire, the oldest known human civilisation which dates back to around 5500BC in southern Iraq. This is a song of praise to the goddess Nisaba who was believed to be the deity without whom no house, palace or city can successfully be built, but who also built families through her gift of children. It may be that this song was known and used later for the worship of Yahweh. It is unlikely either that the ‘house’ is the Temple, or that the author was Solomon, easy though it may be to make those connections. Interestingly Deuteronomy 25:9, among other places in the OT, refers to ‘building up’ the family line through bearing children.

So actually this is not a Psalm in praise of mothers or motherhood, but rather of the God who grants children and builds up the community through them. In biblical thought children, and sons in particular, were the first line of defence of the family when times became hard, particularly for widows with no husbands to provide for them. The picture of your kids as arrows in your quiver speaks of this idea of children as weapons of survival. And of course sons born early in your life will be reaching their prime just as you are getting a bit past yours! This idea is perhaps echoed in the NT’s instructions to children to care for their parents, an apposite comment in a time when we have the ability to pay for others to care for our elderly.

What else can we learn about God from this text? Our dependence on him, of course. It is customary in Church to begin business meetings with a prayer that God will guide us, and the more seriously we take that prayer, according to this text, the more likely we are to be successful in our enterprises. It can be so easy simply to pray the prayer and then get on with our own agendas. After many years of chairing PCC meetings I think I would say that the times when we have most clearly known God’s very specific guidance have been the times when we have been most desperate. God loves it when we simply have nowhere else to turn but to him: that’s why he allows us to get there from time to time. But perhaps it can also give some help to those who are parents about how we treat our kids. I realised pretty early on as a parent that the most important part of my role was always to treat my kids as God would treat them, so that I would reveal through earthly parenting what divine parenting was like, and how my imperfect fatherhood was completed and perfected in the fatherhood of God. That meant, of course, that I had to know how God would treat them in any given situation, which meant that my own discipleship became a vital task if my parenting was to be the best it could. We rarely think of parenting as a theological task, but it really is, and it’s one which doesn’t end when our kids leave home.

Therefore I’m reassured by the first part of the Psalm. Unless God is involved in my parenting, unless he builds me up so that I can build up others, it’s all in vain. Like all parents I felt, and continue to feel, daunted by the task, so it’s great to know that behind all my hard work, joy and tears is the wisdom of a loving Father who, if I let him, will work together with me to build a strong family. You’ll have to ask Steve, Paul and Vicki how well God, their mum and I have done between us!

Reflections on Discipleship – Praying with the Psalms

My job at the moment is developing discipleship in one Anglican diocese, so as you can imagine I do quite a bit of thinking about what discipleship is, what it means, and what it looks like. Here are some random thoughts, gleaned from my reflection on the Bible and current thinking …

You know those moments when you get a sudden flash of insight, when you get for the first time something which you then realise is blindingly obvious? I had one of those moments when a visiting preacher came to the church of which I was vicar. It was this time of year, in the gap between Ascension and Pentecost, and our diocese was encouraging us to use what is called the ‘Novena’ or nine days to pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit to renew and revive the church. In a throwaway comment our preacher told us that of course the disciples gathered for that period in the upper room would have been praying the Psalms. That was how Jews prayed.

Duccio di Buoninsegna. Maestà (back, crowning panel) The Descent of the Holy Spirit.

Now I’d never really thought about it but I realised that the unconscious picture in the back of my mind was nine days of a kind of evangelical prayer-meeting, or a 24-7 prayer week. But since that insight I’ve found myself viewing the Psalms in a whole new light. We all know that they contain pretty much the full range of human situations and emotions, and they can give us words to express just about anything we’re feeling and wanting to say to God. I know that during a period of my life when I was under intense persecution and bullying those psalms about smashing my enemies to bits became very real and heartfelt. They certainly gave me permission to feel what I was feeling! The fact is that we read and pray the psalms through the filter of what we’re going through or thinking about at the time. So to read them during the novena, as prayers for the renewal and revival of God’s church, can be a very helpful and powerful thing.

Of course some psalms are more applicable than others to any given situation, but I think the dynamic is that the bits which speak to us come out of the page and thump us in the face, while the other bits slip quietly by until another occasion when because of a new situation they will speak to us.

So how about thinking yourself into the situation of those first disciples, gathered with both fear and expectation, not knowing quite what to expect but hopeful of something new and powerful? Link that to your situation now, admitting how you feel about the state of the church and your hopes for it. Then start reading some psalms, either from the beginning, or using the passages set in the lectionary. At the end of each psalm, or when something leaps out and hits you, ask yourself the question ‘How does this text make me want to pray for the church?’ My expectation is that prayer will come alive, and my hope is that like those first disciples we will know the powerful presence of the Spirit among us as we pray.

Image from http://www.abcgallery.com

Through the Bible in Just Over a Year – Psalms

Clearly we’re not going to be able to do justice to this huge collection of songs and poems in 600 words, so rather than looking too much at the texts, I want to ask about what the Psalms are, and how we might use them. They contain some of the best-loved and most-neglected words of Scripture: Psalm 23 (‘The Lord is my shepherd’) forms a great contrast with the desire of the author of Psalm 137 who, in an ideal world, would love to see children dashed against rocks. The Anglican tradition used to be that the entire Psalter was prayed once each month, but many churches now neglect the whole book and barely ever use Psalms in worship.

Wiesiołowski David playing the harp.jpg

So what is this book? It has been described as ‘The Hymn Book of the Second Temple’, and that title gives us a great clue as to its nature. With the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, which we read about when looking at Ezra and Nehemiah, the Priests began a revival of worship, which probably involved collecting together Hymns Ancient and Modern into a five-volume book. It is certainly not the case that the whole book was written by King David, although some probably were. When the heading of a Psalm says in English ‘Of David’ the Hebrew means ‘To David’, or ‘From a Davidic collection’, so even the great musician-king acted as compiler of a collection without necessarily being the author. You can trace a development in thought, as well as some historical context, in some of the Psalms: Psalm 1, for example, blithely declares that good people will prosper and bad people flounder: The later book of Job gave the lie to that rather naive idea. Psalm 137, to which we have already referred, is clearly written out of the context of exile and slavery, and even tells us about the Israelites in Babylon yearning for Jerusalem. Probably not by David then, that one.

Theologians love to do ‘Form Criticism’ on the Psalms, in other words trying to reconstruct in what setting they may originally have been used. Some is a bit speculative, but there are also some good clues: Psalms 120-133, labelled as ‘Songs of Ascent’ look as though they might have been used in procession as pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem for festivals. Some Psalms belong in the genre of Wisdom Literature, the most notable of which is Psalm 119, a marathon celebration of God’s laws. There are also some delights in form: Psalm 119, again, is an acrostic Psalm, with the eight verses of each stanza all beginning with the same letter (which some versions of the Bible helpfully give us in Hebrew). The subject matter is as varied as it is possible to be: some are the words for an individual while others are corporate or national; there is celebration, lament, teaching, anguished and angry crying out to God for justice, or indeed any action at all on his part, and there is imprecation, the calling down of God’s anger on those who oppress the Jews. And so on …

So what does this collection as a whole teach us? A lot about God, for a start. Psalms like 78, a ‘recital of mighty acts’, rehearses God’s action in the nation’s history, and reminds us of the importance of remembering and counting our blessings. Many explain just why God is worthy of our heartfelt praise. But the book also teaches us about ourselves. In a church culture which is far too often ‘nice’ and which sweeps any kind of negativity under the carpet, it is comforting to know that Israel felt that it was OK, in the context of worship, to weep, lament, get angry, rant à la Stephen Fry against God’s cruelty, as well as to engage in outrageous celebration. Any church which allows us to do less is missing the point, and may well be doing irreparable harm to us too. There will be a Psalm for any mood, for every occasion, and they make great, if at times uncomfortable, spurs into prayer.