Perhaps some of the best known, most popular parts of scripture are never commented upon in the pulpit. for example The opening lines of Psalm 23- ‘the lord is my shepherd I shall not want, he maketh me lie down in green pastures’, or psalm 139 ‘O Lord you have searched me out and known me, you known my sitting down and my rising up, you discern my thoughts from afar’, are parts of scripture which have entered popular consciousness.
Although the psalms are sung as part of our worship week by week they are rarely subject to exploration in the pulpit. They remain firmly in the hands of the choir rather than the preacher. And perhaps this is the way it should be. The poetry of the psalms speak more to the heart than the mind. They can articulate an emotional response to a situation. They can help us to orientate ourselves in our relationship with God when we face situations of loss and bereavement. When we are grieving the knowledge that God cares for us with the tenderness of a shepherd who leads his sheep by still waters is something to hold on to. It provides an image which sustains us when other parts of scripture may seem arid or meaningless.
The stories of the Old Testament, the parables of the gospels, the confessional statements of Paul’s letters may fail us but the brevity and beauty of the psalms can provide a focus for meditation or prayer. In short the psalms equip us with a language for lamentation which our culture, with its emphasis on success and the pursuit of personal happiness, can find hard to inhabit.
The psalms also allow us to speak doubt or anger, sentiments that may otherwise be unpalatable for the pious Christian. The psalms show us that these things are not to be excluded from our Christian vocabulary. Of course, the psalms partly formed Jesus’ self-expression; that he quoted psalm 22 in his final moments on the cross ‘my god, my god, why have you forsaken me’, allows us to see and perhaps accept our sense of the absence of God in times of darkness and suffering.
But the psalms can also express a sort of religious triumphalism that we may find downright offensive. For example in psalm 140 the Psalmist asks that God wreak revenge on his enemies: “Let burning coals fall on them! Let them be flung into pits, no more to rise”.
These are clearly words that need to be read with great care and some caution.
We are likely to be more familiar with the psalms of praise; songs which quote God’s mighty deeds and where the psalmist gives thanks for all that God has done. It is easy to discern where these psalms would have originally been used; – as songs of praise in the temple;
So the psalms give us a language with which to praise God, to doubt and to question God, to express some of our most difficult emotional responses to a God who has heard it all before. Through the psalms we are given tools for prayer and praise.
The psalm we heard today- Psalm 46, is known as a song of Zion- it is one of a few psalms which proclaim the importance and meaning of Jerusalem in God’s relationship to his people.
All of today’s readings are related to the presence of God revealed to humankind. In the Old Testament we hear about the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant and his promise to be with Joshua as he was with Moses. In the story of the people of Israel God’s saving presence is made known.
In his letter to the Hebrews Paul proclaims and expounds the presence of Jesus Christ in creation and now at the right of God. This is a theological working- out of the significance of Christ for all humanity.
Psalm 46, in its poetry, points to God’s unique presence in Jerusalem. The reference to the river whose streams make glad the city of God, is a symbolic reminder of this holy city in which God dwells.
But the Psalm goes beyond God’s presence in Jerusalem. Rather it speaks of God as the source of protection and safety in a world where nothing is certain. It is this which means it can speak to us across thousands of years when the history of the holy city of Jerusalem has shown us that God’s presence doesn’t insure it against human conflict and religious division. The refrain repeated throughout ‘God is our refuge and strength, the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge’ in verses 1, 7 and 11 lead us back to God our protector.
Whilst the psalmist’s intention is to point to God’s particular relationship with and presence in Jerusalem, it has spoken to people of God’s abiding presence with us wherever and however, we are. Interestingly this psalm inspired Martin Luther to write his famous hymn ‘A mighty fortress is our God’, which he wrote in 1527- a year when he was suffering from severe depression. He found in this psalm a source of comfort and strength.
The psalmist envisages the instability and chaos which the world may be subject to. But ‘though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult’ we will not fear because God is our safety and protection. In the ancient world there was a fear of cosmic instability – signs of this instability could be seen in earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and droughts that are part of the world’s natural cycle.
Read through a 21st century lens we might perceive these fears as superstitious but we might also be led to make a link between the chaos that the psalmist portrays and the chaos that we have created ourselves through our abuse of the earth’s resources. The psalm may still speak a truth to us, but one which could never have been envisaged by the original composer.
If there is a moral to this psalm, it is to place our trust in God who is the ultimate source of stability in a chaotic world. This may be a source of comfort to us when we are confronted by more and more evidence of climate change, but it may also be something of a challenge to us. If the nations of the world were to truly place their trust in God the need to safeguard their place on the world stage would cease to exist. The consequence of trusting in God might be losing the need to assert oneself- either on an individual or a national basis. In this way we, with God, make true the invitation that the psalmist makes towards the end of this psalm:
‘Come, behold the works of the LORD…
He makes wars cease to the end of the worth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear.’
Finally it is in being still and knowing that God is God, that we can best prepare ourselves for this revelation of God’s presence among us.
Amen