Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 78: Remembring in untethered times

Psalm 78: 
God’s Guidance of His People in Spite of Their Unfaithfulness.

¹ Listen, O my people, to my instruction;
Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
³ Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us.
⁴ We will not conceal them from their children,
But tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord,
And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.
⁵ For He established a testimony in Jacob
And appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers
That they should teach them to their children,
⁶ That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born,
That they may arise and tell them to their children,
⁷ That they should put their confidence in God
And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments,
⁸ And not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not prepare its heart
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.
⁹ The sons of Ephraim were archers equipped with bows,
Yet they turned back in the day of battle.
¹⁰ They did not keep the covenant of God and refused to walk in His law;
¹¹ They forgot His deeds and His miracles that He had shown them.
¹² He wrought wonders before their fathers
In the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
¹³ He divided the sea and caused them to pass through,
And He made the waters stand up like a heap.
¹⁴ Then He led them with the cloud by day
And all the night with a light of fire.
¹⁵ He split the rocks in the wilderness
And gave them abundant drink like the ocean depths.
¹⁶ He brought forth streams also from the rock
And caused waters to run down like rivers.
¹⁷ Yet they still continued to sin against Him,
To rebel against the Most High in the desert.
¹⁸ And in their heart they put God to the test
By asking food according to their desire.
¹⁹ Then they spoke against God;
They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
²⁰ “Behold, He struck the rock so that waters gushed out,
And streams were overflowing;
Can He give bread also? Will He provide meat for His people?”
²¹ Therefore the Lord heard and was full of wrath;
And a fire was kindled against Jacob
and anger also mounted against Israel,
²² Because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation.
²³ Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven;
²⁴ He rained down manna upon them to eat
And gave them food from heaven.
²⁵ Man did eat the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.
²⁶ He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
And by His power He directed the south wind.
²⁷ When He rained meat upon them like the dust,
Even winged fowl like the sand of the seas,
²⁸ Then He let them fall in the midst of their camp,
Round about their dwellings.
²⁹ So they ate and were well filled, and their desire He gave to them.
³⁰ Before they had satisfied their desire,
While their food was in their mouths,
³¹ The anger of God rose against them
And killed some of their stoutest ones,
And subdued the choice men of Israel.
³² In spite of all this they still sinned
And did not believe in His wonderful works.
³³ So He brought their days to an end in futility
And their years in sudden terror.
³⁴ When He killed them, then they sought Him,
And returned and searched diligently for God;
³⁵ And they remembered that God was their rock,
And the Most High God their Redeemer.
³⁶ But they deceived Him with their mouth
And lied to Him with their tongue.
³⁷ For their heart was not steadfast toward Him,
Nor were they faithful in His covenant.
³⁸ But He, being compassionate,
forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them;
And often He restrained His anger and did not arouse all His wrath.
³⁹ Thus He remembered that they were but flesh,
A wind that passes and does not return.
⁴⁰ How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness
And grieved Him in the desert!
⁴¹ Again and again they tempted God, and pained the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They did not remember His power,
The day when He redeemed them from the adversary,
⁴³ When He performed His signs in Egypt
And His marvels in the field of Zoan,
⁴⁴ And turned their rivers to blood,
And their streams, they could not drink.
⁴⁵ He sent among them swarms of flies which devoured them,
And frogs which destroyed them.
⁴⁶ He gave also their crops to the grasshopper
And the product of their labour to the locust.
⁴⁷ He destroyed their vines with hailstones
And their sycamore trees with frost.
⁴⁸ He gave over their cattle also to the hailstones
And their herds to bolts of lightning.
⁴⁹ He sent upon them His burning anger,
Fury and indignation and trouble, a band of destroying angels.
⁵⁰ He levelled a path for His anger;
He did not spare their soul from death,
But gave over their life to the plague,
⁵¹ And smote all the firstborn in Egypt,
The first issue of their virility in the tents of Ham.
⁵² But He led forth His own people like sheep
And guided them in the wilderness like a flock;
⁵³ He led them safely, so that they did not fear;
But the sea engulfed their enemies.
⁵⁴ So He brought them to His holy land,
To this hill country which His right hand had gained.
⁵⁵ He also drove out the nations before them
And apportioned them for an inheritance by measurement,
And made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.
⁵⁶ Yet they tempted and rebelled against the Most High God
And did not keep His testimonies,
⁵⁷ But turned back and acted treacherously like their fathers;
They turned aside like a treacherous bow.
⁵⁸ For they provoked Him with their high places
And aroused His jealousy with their graven images.
⁵⁹ When God heard, He was filled with wrath
And greatly abhorred Israel;
⁶⁰ So that He abandoned the dwelling place at Shiloh,
The tent which He had pitched among men,
⁶¹ And gave up His strength to captivity
And His glory into the hand of the adversary.
⁶² He also delivered His people to the sword,
And was filled with wrath at His inheritance.
⁶³ Fire devoured His young men, and His virgins had no wedding songs.
⁶⁴ His priests fell by the sword, and His widows could not weep.
⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep, like a warrior overcome by wine.
⁶⁶ He drove His adversaries backward;
He put on them an everlasting reproach.
⁶⁷ He also rejected the tent of Joseph,
And did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
⁶⁸ But chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which He loved.
⁶⁹ And He built His sanctuary like the heights,
Like the earth which He has founded forever.
⁷⁰ He also chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹ From the care of the ewes with suckling lambs He brought him
To shepherd Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance.
⁷² So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart,
And guided them with his skillful hands.

This is a psalm about remembering a big story… it is a passionate history lesson with a clear agenda. We need to remember to live fully in the present and to have a forward-looking hope for the future. Perhaps one of the gifts of lockdown has been remembering things from our past that we are so utterly grateful for because of God’s great and bountiful goodness. For, forgetting the big story of God means we lose the guy ropes that hold down the tent of loving faith and grateful understanding. Everything begins to flap around in the wind and soon we become untethered and exposed.

In this psalm, after scores of verses retelling the age-old founding story of the Jewish faith, suddenly, the story of remembering ends. It ends with a shepherd who has ‘skillful hands’. Psalm 78 is a moderately long poem of remembrance. And it is aptly placed following Psalm 77, where one of the important discoveries of the desolate psalmist is the importance of remembering God’s deeds in order to have hope.

This psalm takes the broad sweep of the history of the exodus, the wandering in the desert, the many disobediences and the almost incessant forgetfulness of the chosen people – until the very last verses where we arrive at God’s choice of a dwelling place (Mount Zion) and a leader (David).

The superscription for this psalm is: God’s Guidance of His People in Spite of Their Unfaithfulness. What the psalmist does is lay out the constant tension between God and his ‘chosen’ people. Notwithstanding their privileged place in God’s affections, the Israelite nation’s story is one of receiving a blessing and then, distressingly, soon forgetting that blessing. It is as if there is an inevitability about this. As soon as a God-follower becomes confident, things fall apart. We get drawn to other competing forces. In the case of the recounting of the serial disobedience (vs8, 17, 23, 32, 36, 40 etc). ‘They did not keep in mind his power, or the day when he redeemed them from the foe,’ is one of the most significant statements of the whole psalm (vs42). The propaganda of the psalmist’s history lesson focuses on repeated failures of the nation, the testing and stretching of God’s patience, demonstrations of his anger and wrath, followed by periods of true repentance and renewed hope. The psalmist wants the hearers to know, for future generations’ education’s sake, that God keeps coming up with a rescue plan, despite everything. And the psalm ends on the high note that a shepherd boy, plucked from virtual obscurity, becomes the instrument of God’s gracious rule. ‘With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with a skilful hand’ (vs72).

The purpose of the psalm is that that future generations should know – from the experience and history of the chosen people – that God is present and God is active in history. And that all God’s children should never fail to trust this activity.

In this time of Covid19, as in any other age, God is at work. God’s supreme work has already happened. He has sent his son Jesus to confront – to bring into the open – the powers of darkness that seek to destroy life again and again and again. This significant moment, the still centre of being around which everything else revolves, is the moment of God’s greatest defeat and humiliation – the death of Jesus on the cross. We remember Jesus’ death and resurrection as the founding centralities of our faith. We also remember his loving sacrifice in that missionally worshipful feast around a shared table, which is called the Eucharist. And we wait with hope for the day when we can again share bread and wine together, in remembrance of all Jesus did and all Jesus is doing, forming and shaping today.

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 77: Footprints of God

Psalm 77[1]

¹ I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me.
² In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
    in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
    my soul refuses to be comforted.
³ I think of God, and I moan; I meditate, and my spirit faints.                                                                                                                                                                                                        Selah
⁴ You keep my eyelids from closing; I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
⁵ I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago.
⁶ I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit:
⁷ ‘Will the Lord spurn for ever, and never again be favourable?
⁸  Has his steadfast love ceased for ever?
   Are his promises at an end for all time?
⁹  Has God forgotten to be gracious?
    Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’                                         
                                                                                                                                                        Selah
¹⁰ And I say, ‘It is my grief  that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’
¹¹ I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;      
      I will remember your wonders of old.
¹² I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.
¹³ Your way, O God, is holy. What god is so great as our God?
¹⁴ You are the God who works wonders;      
      you have displayed your might among the peoples.
¹⁵ With your strong arm you redeemed your people,      
      the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.                                               
                                                                                                                                                     Selah
¹⁶ When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you,
       they were afraid; the very deep trembled.
¹⁷ The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered;       
       your arrows flashed on every side.
¹⁸  The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;       
       your lightnings lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook.
¹⁹  Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters;       
       yet your footprints were unseen.
²⁰ You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Sleepless night give way to anguished days; this is the life of this faithful poet of prayer. He or she cannot let go of the fact that God is faithful, yet, at the same time, everything in their anguished reality points entirely away from this eschatological truth: that God is sovereign and still rules.

From verse 1 to 10, the unnamed distress of the psalmist is writ large. Whatever has happened (scholars think this is a meditation on the nature of a faithful life in a time of exile) the prayer tells us that the afflicted one cannot make sense of the situation. Try as they might, their spirit faints and they are reduced to moaning and groaning (echoes of Romans 8.26-28). Their soul refuses comfort (vs3). Throughout the night they think and meditate and search for a resolution. But all that flows are questions about God:
                        ⁷ ‘Will the Lord spurn for ever, and never again be favourable?

⁸  Has his steadfast love ceased for ever?    Are his promises at an end for all time?
⁹  Has God forgotten to be gracious?
    Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’

Doubt appears to overcome hope. God’s forgetfulness seems to be the only certainty. There is no free grace any more (what a bleak world that would be). There is no more compassion (just anger and rage). The nature of God is the conundrum at the heart of this psalm,

Then, all of a sudden, quite out of the blue really, the psalmist finds energy for a different track of thought. Somehow, the poet begins to remember how to remember. A new kind of meditative practice seems possible. There seems to be an element of sheer will power at work here (vs11 and 12). Parallelism, that trick of Hebrew verse, accentuates this determined act of reflecting and going deeper into the story that shapes the faith. Four times we get a variation on this deep remembering: the psalmist pledges to ‘call to mind’, to ‘remember’, to ‘meditate’ and to ‘muse’ on the deeds and actions of God as described in the foundation story of the Jewish faith – the exodus which springs from the Passover.

This faithful soul languishing in deep despair, seems to force himself or herself to spend time remembering, dragging deep memories from the back of their mind into the foreground of their lives. This places a great deal of expectation on the cognitive capacity of this distressed, sleepless and possibly depressed person.

Yet, there is also room for the high mystery of God too. The psalmist recounts a very shortened edited highlights of the Exodus: he or she refers to the  the crossing of the waters of the Red Sea and the voice of God in the terror of a violent thunder storm. And then, most revealingly, the psalmist says in the penultimate verse: ^‘Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.’

This is perhaps the most important verse in this psalm, to my mind. For it recognises both he presence and the absence of God in the midst of a turning point, a struggle, a wrestle or a life-changing point of discernment. The psalmist is happy to allow God to both present in guiding people through the most challenging of circumstances, and also the absence of God – because God’s footsteps cannot be seen at all.

This psalm is reminiscent of the very popular, but nonetheless powerful, poem: Footprints in the Sand by Mary Stephenson in 1936.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.

                    Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
                    In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
                   Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.
                   This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life,
                   when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat,
                   I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,
                   “You promised me Lord, 
                      that if I followed you, you would walk with me always.
                   But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life
                   there has only been one set of footprints in the sand.
                   Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
                   The Lord replied,
                   “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints,
                    my child, is when I carried you.”
 
As we walk through these days of great uncertainty, a sense of un-tetheredness and a realisation that this is now a long-term way of life for us in this age of pandemic, may we all know and understand that the Lord carries us through the darkness and leads us to the other side of the cause of our trembling and trauma. 

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[1] New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA)
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 76: From rage to praise

Psalm 76[1] 

¹ God is well known in the land of Judah. He is famous throughout Israel,
² making his home in Jerusalem, living here on Mount Zion.
³ That’s where he smashes every weapon of war that comes against him.
That’s where he uses the broken arrows as kindling for his mighty bonfire.

Pause in his presence


⁴ God, you are so resplendent and radiant!
Your majesty shines from your everlasting mountain.
Nothing could be compared to you in glory!
⁵ Even the mightiest of men have been paralyzed by your presence.
They were so stunned and lifeless,
not even the strongest one could lift a hand.
⁶ When Jacob’s God roared his rebuke,
soldiers and their steeds all fell to the ground, stunned and lying still.
⁷ No wonder you are greatly feared! You are the awe-inspiring God!
For who could ever stand before your face
when your fierce anger burns and live to tell about it.
⁸ As the earth itself holds its breath in awe before you,
judgment is decreed from heaven.
⁹ You arise to punish evil and defend the gentle upon the earth.

Pause in his presence


¹⁰ You have power to transform man’s futile anger into praise.
The fury of your enemies only causes your fame to increase.
¹¹ So you’d better keep every promise you’ve ever made
to the Awesome One, Jehovah-God!
Let all people bring their extravagant gifts to him alone.
¹² He is famous for breaking the spirit of the powers that be.
And the kings of the earth will know him as the Fearsome One!

This is a translation from the relatively new paraphrased version, The Passion Translation. But each translations struggles in particular to interpret verse 10, whose Hebrew is not clear. I focus in on this verse today because it centres on the anger of God’s opponents – who could be all of us. And this verse is set amid a context of praise of God who comes to us in such awe and splendour and that even the mightiest of rulers are ‘paralysed by God’s presence’ (vs5). This God, whose dwelling place is Jerusalem in the psalmist's tradition, comes to punish evil and ‘defend the gentle upon the earth’ (vs9). With this sense of motion and action, the God of justice and peace, who is ‘famous for breaking the spirit of the powers that be’ (vs12) and who puts rulers of this world in their place, takes on humanity’s propensity to rage and anger in this disputed verse 10.

Here are a collection of translations of this verse:

·      New Revised Standard Version:

             Human wrath serves only to praise you,

when you bind the last bit of your wrath around you.

·      New American Standard Bible:

            For the wrath of man shall praise You;

With a remnant of wrath You will gird Yourself.

·      New International Version:

            Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise, 
             and the survivors of your wrath are restrained.

What are we to make of these elusive translations? Can even our anger be turned to praise? If so, what kinds of anger? Is this specifically about the anger of God’s opponents – the self-sufficient and boastful ones of Psalm 75? And is their anger caused by the realisation that events in life cannot be controlled quite so smoothly as they hope or expect? Is the root of the fury, simply frustration – a frustration that takes time to build into this kind of rage? If so in what sense does human wrath serve only to praise God? And in what way can my own anger be turned to praise?

A small example. Yesterday I experienced road rage. I was not driving, I was a passenger. The scene, a narrow residential street. An oncoming car had the chance to wait in a more spacious part of the road as our car had already travelled a fair distance along the tight-packed route. But the other car kept coming and forced our vehicle into a space where it was impossible to pass and then stood their ground. Frustration built up in me. The situation was ridiculous. We could not budge and they would not reverse. A stand-off. And I got out of the car (big mistake) to ask the other car to move back. A volley of abuse. Anger rising in me, barely controlled. Urged by the others in our car to get back in, we finally edged back into a slightly wider passing point. They drove past at gathering speed. Further abuse volleyed at us. Disturbed and shaken. We drove on to our destination. Upset. Reflecting. Ashamed by my hot-headed decision to try and remonstrate where it clearly was a fool’s errand. Further reflection on how I handle this kind of conflict situation. This futile anger has not turned to praise. But it has put me in a place where I am wanting to learn ways that are more praiseworthy. Being ashamed can be profitable rather than futile. Shame’s feedback can ripple through your sense of identity. But it can also be a transformative tutor. And this psalm teaches there can be nothing more transformative than the path from self-justifying rage to God-focused praise.

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 1The Passion Translation (TPT) The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC. Used by permission. All rights reserved. thePassionTranslation.com

Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 75: The Cup

Psalm 75[1]
¹   God, our hearts spill over with praise to you!
     We overflow with thanks, for your name is the “Near One.”
     All we want to talk about is your wonderful works!
     And we hear your reply:
²   “When the time is ripe I will arise,
     and I will judge the world with perfect righteousness.
³   Though I have set the earth firmly on its pillars,
     I will shake it until it totters and everyone’s hearts will tremble.”
Pause in his presence

⁴    God warns the proud, “Stop your arrogant boasting!”
      And he warns the wicked,
      “Don’t think for a moment you can resist me!
⁵     Why would you speak with such stubborn pride?
      Don’t you dare raise your fist against me!”
^6–7 This I know:
      the favour that brings promotion and power
      doesn’t come from anywhere on earth,
      for no one exalts a person but God, the true judge of all.
      He alone determines where favour rests.
      He anoints one for greatness
      and brings another down to his knees.
⁸     A foaming cup filled with judgment mixed with fury
      is in the hands of the Lord Jehovah,
      full to the brim and ready to run over.
      He filled it up for the wicked and they will drink it
      down to the very last drop!
⁹     But I will proclaim the victory of the God of Jacob.
       My melodies of praise will make him known.
¹⁰   My praises will break the powers of wickedness
      while the righteous will be promoted and become powerful!

A time of trembling, a time of judgment, a time of lifting up the lowly and of breaking the power of wickedness. This is the theme of this psalm, painted figuratively with the powerful image of the foaming cup of God's judgment. 

As the pandemic continues to wreak its havoc in lives lost (nearly 43,000 recorded deaths to Covid-19 as of June 23^rd) we are also more than aware of the untold wounding of lives in multitudinous ways (losses of jobs, homes, relationships, networks, education, future prospects). We begin to emerge from the lockdown into a new future aware that it feels like humanity has been shaken and many hearts tremble (vs3). And as it has now been anounced that pubs and other places of fellowship and social gathering will now begin to be opened in the early summer, this psalm's powerful image of the foaming cup gives us something to reflect upon.


I confess to becoming more aware of a sense of trembling within me in these days. It certainly feels like the quiet certainties of the beginning of this year have all been cast aside. We focus so much on death rates at present – whether of pandemic victims or of victims of violence or racist actions – that we have all become aware of our own mortality. There is an inner trembling of the heart, certainly.

Amidst the trembling of the verse 3, there is yet great certainty. The world falls into two clear camps. Those who depend upon God, often the most needy and the most fragile; and those who do not depend upon God, often those who boast of their own self-sufficiency. The self-sufficient may also be in places of power, but they also may be powerless – the psalm does not make this clear. The only way it describes those who are not God-followers is by the way they boast (vs4) of their own power and the way, in their stubborn pride, they believe they can fight God’s purposes (vs5).

These are the ones who will taste God’s righteous judgment – figuratively described as being forced to drink to the last drop a foaming cup of wrath, strong and undiluted (vs8).

The image of the cup full to overflowing is one the psalmist has already explored earlier in the psalter. This is a contrasting cup. It is a cup of blessing which is full to overflowing (‘my cup overflows’ Ps23.5) at the banquet table of the Lord. This is served to the trusting follower of the Good Shepherd at a table laid out before all his or her enemies.

These two cups – the cup of judgment and the cup of blessing – come together in the cup of wine drunk and offered by Jesus to his disciples on the night before he died. Christians believe that in that prophetic act – an act supreme of all the prophetic acts of the Scriptures – Jesus demonstrated how he had taken into himself the judgment of the wicked and the blessing of the just. He drew the poison of the cup of wrath. He took the undeserved suffering of the lowly and the weak as well as the justified suffering of the hard-hearted enemy. And he took it all upon the cross – where wrath and mercy meet.

For many years I suspected that God’s judgement was about wrath. Somewhere in the darkened recesses of my mind and heart, where I did not want to go, I created a box, a category, a dark and foggy and unclear designation, that this was what God was probably, in the end, about. Anger. Rage. Wrath. But as I have thought about my own trembling heart (and the uncertainty of this time) and the life of Jesus lifting that cup which he shared with his friends, I again seek to understand a mystery.

Psalm 75 is not presenting quick solutions for evil acts. But it is presenting a picture of divine justice which we understand, through the Gospel lens, Jesus has already borne. Christ drunk to the dregs the wrath which mundane sin and outrageous evil generates. The cup of Psalm 75 has been emptied on the cross. The cup of Psalm 23 – along with the table groaning with food and the friends of God gathered around it in joyful celebration – is the cup I believe we are being offered.

As we emerge from lockdown, may the table of fellowship become something we honour and love with more energy than before. And may we look to offer the cup of Psalm 23 to others. An may our hearts ‘spill over with praise’ to God (vs1). For the cup of Psalm 75 has been drunk by Jesus for us all.

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[1] The Passion Translation (TPT) The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 74: In him all things hold together

Psalm 74[1]

¹   O God, why do you cast us off for ever?     
      Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?
²    Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago,     
      which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage.     
      Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.
³    Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins;     
      the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.
⁴   Your foes have roared within your holy place;
     they set up their emblems there.
⁵   At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes.
⁶   And then, with hatchets and hammers, they smashed all its carved work.
⁷   They set your sanctuary on fire;     they desecrated the dwelling-place of your name, bringing it to the ground.
⁸  They said to themselves, ‘We will utterly subdue them’;     
     they burned all the meeting-places of God in the land.
⁹  We do not see our emblems; there is no longer any prophet,    
     and there is no one among us who knows how long.
¹⁰ How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?      
      Is the enemy to revile your name for ever?
¹¹  Why do you hold back your hand;      
       why do you keep your hand in your bosom?
¹² Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.
¹³ You divided the sea by your might;      
      you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.
¹⁴ You crushed the heads of Leviathan;      
       you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
¹⁵ You cut openings for springs and torrents;      
       you dried up ever-flowing streams.
¹⁶  Yours is the day, yours also the night;      
       you established the luminaries and the sun.
¹⁷ You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter.
¹⁸ Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs,
      and an impious people reviles your name.
¹⁹ Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild animals;      
      do not forget the life of your poor for ever.
²⁰ Have regard for your covenant,
      for the dark places of the land are full of the haunts of violence.
²¹ Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame;      
      let the poor and needy praise your name.
²² Rise up, O God, plead your cause;      
      remember how the impious scoff at you all day long.
²³ Do not forget the clamour of your foes,      
      the uproar of your adversaries that goes up continually.

The glue that held the place together has gone. Everything is falling apart. And the one that glued the place together seems to have forgotten it. Devastated, the poet tells the story. Ruins and bellowing foes, this is what was left of beautiful Jerusalem and the Temple. In shock, utter trauma, the poet strings words together to make sense of it all. Yet, despite all the horror, God is in the dock and at the centre of the complaint. These are your foes. This is your city. These are your people. What are you going to do about it, God? You who separated the waters of the Red Sea for the exodus people to cross over safely. You who create the boundaries of sea and land, earth and sky. You who set the luminous countless stars in their place. You who make both summer and winter. How long are you going to hold back from putting it all back together?

And then, after proclaiming the magnificent sovereignty of God, the poet appeals to the heart of God because of the poverty of God’s people. God’s people are like a poor and helpless dove, vulnerable and without fight. In these dark days, don’t forget your dove. Remember your promise, your covenant. The dove who first flew over the waters of the flood, the chaos of that first devastation; the dove who gave hope to the ark-load; the dove that flees trouble over the farthest seas; the dove that lands over the Christ-parted waters of the Jordan: this very light of life which will be taken to the darkest place of all, Golgotha, to shine out across the millennia as the true hope, the glue that holds all life together – this very light needs to rise up NOW to save the poor and needy. Not in some totalitarian barbarism, no! But with the still small voice that can rise above the clamour of it all. Even as that noise bellows out continually, the still small voice of God will span from alpha to omega. This is the reality, the centre, the firstborn of all creation, in whom all things were created, visible and invisible, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1. 15-17.)

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[1] New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 73: A prodigal's psalm

Psalm 73[1]

Plea for Relief from Oppressors

¹   Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.
²   But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped.
³   For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
⁴   For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek.
⁵  They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.
⁶   Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment.
⁷   Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.
⁸   They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.
⁹   They set their mouths against heaven,
     and their tongues range over the earth.
¹⁰  Therefore the people turn and praise them, and find no fault in them.
¹¹ And they say, ‘How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’
¹² Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
¹³ All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
¹⁴ For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.
¹⁵ If I had said, ‘I will talk on in this way’,
      I would have been untrue to the circle of your children.
¹⁶ But when I thought how to understand this,
      it seemed to me a wearisome task,
¹⁷ until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.
¹⁸ Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.
¹⁹  How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
²⁰ They are like a dream when one awakes;
     on awaking you despise their phantoms.
²¹ When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,
²² I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast towards you.
²³ Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.
²⁴ You guide me with your counsel,
      and afterwards you will receive me with honour.
²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but you? 
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.
²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
²⁷ Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;
     you put an end to those who are false to you.
²⁸ But for me it is good to be near God;
     I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works.

This psalm lies at the very centre of the psalter. Its placement is significant. For it also speaks of a deep theology of wrestling faith. It seems thoroughly ageless and thoroughly modern. It tells of a journey of understanding that starts by being distracted by the apparent victory of wrong over right. Faithfulness seems futile if its rewards are measured by the rewards of this world. Yet, as the words tumble out of the mouth of this soul, so disturbed by inequity, there is movement from an anguished naïve faith to a deeply relational faith with God who is not distant but present.

I am struck by the words ‘near’ and ‘far’ that conclude this psalm. The nearer you get to God’s refuge, the further you are from the kind of places inhabited by the self-centred, self-dependent, arrogant, proud, human way of living which does not live by God’s promises.

For it is only at the edges of power – far from the sleek-bodied ‘beautiful’ people of ease – that God’s presence is to be found, suggests the poet.

Initially the psalmist is apparently swayed by the green-eyed god, envy. It seems that following God’s ways are so painful and that those who do not put trust in God live such prosperous lives that it does not seem to be worth the candle. In verse 3, the prayer reveals searing honesty – ‘I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked.’ The poet tells how many others are also beguiled by the lives of those who are apparently free of pain, have no troubles, yet have power to speak lies and malice with tongues that ‘range over the earth’. In verse 10, we learn that the people find no fault in them. God is completely out of the picture (‘How can God know?’). These celebrities of their day – with wealth, health and ease – are very real to the psalmist. By comparison, an afflicted life of faith seems not to make any sense. ‘All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence,’ he says.  

Walter Brueggemann, in his study of the psalms, says that the apparent success of the affluent, cynical, well-off who seem to thrive is troubling to the psalmist because ‘they’ either prove that God is good to those who do not keep the covenant (which is a mockery of divine promise) or that God is irrelevant. ‘Either way, the special claim of Israel is in deep question. “They” are described in great detail, indicating not only that the speaker is a careful observer, but that he has been intensely, almost obsessively, fascinated with the subject…. They are exceedingly well-fed, and their bodies are well cared for. They engage in self-care and self-love to the point of self-indulgence. They live for themselves, and they evoke resentment from those schooled passionately in the care of the neighbour, who are exhausted and perhaps burned out…. They are not well-off because they are lucky. Such wealth and comfort, the psalmist argues, is based on violence (vs6) and oppression (vs8). They are skilful and adept at self-interest  and have no shame about it. They are genuinely autonomous people who look after themselves (vs11). The psalmist is troubled with the obvious conclusion: it works!’[2]

How this speaks to our day? What a thoroughly-modern psalm. What a critique of the kind of spirit that grips our time. How bleak it would be if the prevailing culture was the true way of life. Between vs 13 and 16 it seems the psalmist is beginning to believe that the way of God was a ‘wearisome task’. I find comfort in the honesty of this dialogue with God.

The turning point for the psalmist seems to come in an unspecified experience which happens in the sanctuary of God (vs17).

The life of the sleek is just a ghost-life which will be chased away like a dream at the dawn of day.

Yet, the psalmist’s searing honesty continues. Looking back, he or she realises that when their heart was embittered by these thoughts then they were like a ‘brute beast’ towards God. Far from God. Completely obsessed. Perhaps seduced again by pragmatism rather than fidelity.

Then, the most beautiful part of this psalm bursts forth in word pictures of close communion, friendship, guidance along a faithful path. From verse 23 onwards a new future seems possible, not dragged back by greed, oppression and easy ways: God is close enough to hold the right hand of the psalmist, offering relationships and a new way open to a faithful life. Inner counsel, wise thoughts from a rich inner life rather than something motivated by all that glitters on the surface, is the source of new hope. And having being guided by God’s counsel and held by the right hand, the faithful person discovers they are received into the wellbeing of God’s presence (and this does not particularly mean some future heavenly glory after death either). This is about enjoying God’s presence in the here and now, this world, not just the next. As pray-ers of the Lord’s prayer, our daily cry is that God’s kingdom and will both come and are done on earth as they already are done in the heavenly realm.

This is a prodigal’s psalm. It is the story of a person who had close relationship with God, but whose eyes were tempted and taunted by wealth and ease. Yet at some unspecified point – not in a pigsty but in the sanctuary – the psalmist ‘comes to his senses’ (see the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.17) and realises that the way of the self-centred is a false journey. Behold, those who are far from God lose their way. Those who are distant from God die. Autonomy does not work. Self-reliance creates a hard shell around the heart. Close friendship with God, who opens our hearts to hardship and sorrow and schools us in the way of fellowship and endurance and hope, is the only way to fullness of life. In Jesus, we find the encouragement again and again to return to God. And in the Parable of the Prodigal Son we see the most moving and profound reconciliation is truly possible. No-one, not even the sleek-bodied and once wealthy, are barred from the feast of friendship with God. The wellbeing of the prodigal is echoed in these final verses. False living is replace with friendship. The gulf between God and those who oppress and deceive and make merry without accountability is closed when the false ways of the heart are left behind.

I have found this a psalm which needs meditating upon in our time.

It has taken me more time to sit with and reflect upon than almost any other psalm.

It is a psalm of great wisdom which applies as much to our times as it did all those millennia ago.

It is a psalm, above all, which studies the motivations of the heart and describes the ways of the heart. It is, indeed, a meditation on the heart. Martin Buber is quoted by Brueggemann in a final flourish of his examination of Psalm 73. He points out that the ‘heart’ is mentioned six times in these 28 verses.    

   The pure in heart (vs1)
   The heart overflowing with follies (vs7)
   A well-kept heart is futile (vs13)
   A sour embittered heart (vs21)
   A failed heart (vs26)
   A strengthened heart (vs26)

What turns this heart from despair to deeper friendship with God, from seduction to healing, from isolation to fellowship?

Looking back it seems something happened to change the psalmist’s heart. It seems that in fact vs15-16 are as significant as vs17. What is important to the psalmist is, in the end, remaining faithful to a way of life that he or she has lived before their children. They could not turn back on that faithfulness because of their children. Their ‘wake-up’ moment seems to be not dissimilar to the prodigal in Jesus’ beautiful parable. It is all about faithful relationship in the end. And our hearts are made stronger by these kinds of faithful relationships – always. The holy place still plays its part. Because it is only in the holy place, Brueggemann suggests, ‘where one gets free of the ideology of self-sufficiency, affluence, and autonomy long enough to recognise the decisive reality is a move on the part of the faithful God. The denial of God (vs11) does not change the reality of God (vs23). This psalmist has arrived at a new orientation, a decision to maintain an alternative reading of reality.’[3]

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[1]
New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] The Message of the Psalms; A Theological Commentary, Ausburg, Minneapolis ©1984, p117

[3] Ibid p121