Our first scripture reading this morning was Psalm 1. The Church of England chooses particular psalms to be said or sung every Sunday. We usually read the three other Bible passages and leave out the psalm (for reasons of time), but recently we have tried to include the psalm more often, recognizing the importance of the Book of Psalms in the Bible and for our Christian faith. Today we read the first psalm, which has been described as "a faithful doorkeeper", standing at the entrance to this, the longest book in the Bible. It serves as an introduction, a way into the Book of Psalms as a whole. Its content also makes it a suitable way in, as it issues a solemn call to avoid attitudes and ways of life that take us away from God, instead focusing our hearts and minds on God's will for us, God's law, so that our lives may become "like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season" (1:3). Psalm 1, this faithful doorkeeper, introduces us into a great expanse of spiritual nourishment, the whole Book of Psalms; it calls us to a serious reckoning with the God who seeks to shape our lives and make them fruitful. Although there's much to learn even from this short first psalm, I thought this morning we could follow its prompt to go beyond it and step into the larger world of the whole Book of Psalms, take a look around, get some sense of its varied scenery, and think about its place in our lives as Christians.
The Book of Psalms is the hymnbook of the people of Israel. Just like our hymnbooks today, its contents come from different times and different authors in the centuries before Christ, though it is traditionally associated especially with David and his musical ability. And like our Christian hymns and songs, the psalms are very varied, in fact, more varied than our hymns and songs – I'll come back to that point. They were composed for many different occasions and purposes: for worship in the temple in Jerusalem, but also to be sung on pilgrimage, going up to Jerusalem (e.g., 84, 120-133); to remind the people of their history, with some long retellings of the story of God's faithfulness to Israel (78, 105, 106); psalms confessing sin and asking for God's forgiveness (32, 51); psalms that reflect on God's law and seek wisdom to live by (119); psalms for special occasions, like a royal wedding (45) or harvest festival (65); for times of great national anxiety, such as the fear of war (46); psalms from times of disaster, such as the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (74, 89) or exile in Babylon (137). In all of this there is great variety of mood and tone: there is celebration and joy in God's goodness (100), but also bewilderment, often asking 'How long, O Lord?' (13) Where are you, God? When will you come and help us? (10) Some psalms speak as 'we', others as 'I' – they express the faith and the experience both of the whole people and of the individual. They are about the whole of life, lived before God, in joy and sorrow, celebration and anger, trust and anxiety, even the deepest despair (88), health and sickness, peace and war. It's all there. And the Book of Psalms is given to us to help us bring before God the whole of who we are, together with the often grim reality of our world.
Let's introduce a bit of Biblical trivia here: some fun facts about the Psalms. Who knows what is the shortest of all the psalms? It's Psalm 117, just two verses long. But nevertheless it's one of the psalms explicitly quoted in the New Testament, by Paul in his letter to the Romans (15:11). And what about the longest psalm? Psalm 119, by far the longest chapter in the whole Bible, clocking up 176 verses. The author of this epic might be disappointed to know that despite its great length it is not quoted at all in the New Testament. Maybe there's a moral there? On the other hand, Psalm 119 was the favourite psalm of the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is praise indeed, and a pretty good consolation prize. Another interesting thing about Psalm 119, and there's an important point here, is that it consists of 22 sections, each eight verses long. In the first section the first word of each verse starts with the letter aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the second section it's the second letter, beth, and so on through all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You might find that either quite fun or a bit weird, but part of the reason for this approach (which is found in various forms in six other psalms) was almost certainly to help people memorize the psalms.
This prompts me to put in a word for memorizing scripture and particularly passages from the Psalms, whether a verse, a short section, or even a whole Psalm, such as perhaps the most famous one, Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd". I wonder if any of you have memorized a psalm. Some of you my age or older might well have done, but I guess it's less likely in younger people. That's partly because nowadays, of course, everything is immediately accessible online, so why bother learning anything by heart? Changes in educational philosophy have also made learning any texts by heart unfashionable, but I suggest that even if those changes had a point to make, they threw out the baby with the bathwater. Certainly, for us as Christians I believe there is great blessing in the memorization of scripture, and perhaps especially the Psalms. To be able to recite scripture to oneself can be a valuable spiritual resource, letting God's word soak gradually into our minds, imaginations and hearts. Such memorization is much easier early in life but it's not impossible when you're older.
Lent is starting in just over two weeks. If you're wondering about a discipline for Lent this year, you could consider not just the usual negatives (no alcohol, no chocolate, etc.) but also the positive goal of getting to know the Psalms better, and maybe committing some verses or short passages to memory. If you read three or four psalms a day you'll get through them all before Easter. As you go through them, you could ask yourself whether there is a psalm that particularly addresses your situation in life. This psalm could become like a spiritual companion to you, one that you return to again and again, at your regular times of prayer, but also perhaps when walking alone, or awake at night with your mind full of concerns. This is a way to hide or treasure God's word in our hearts (119:11), as one psalm encourages us to do, so that it will take deep root and bear fruit richly. A further encouragement to develop this spiritual practice is that it's clear that the Psalms meant a lot to Jesus and were often in his thoughts and on his lips. He found in the psalms key reference-points for understanding his relationship to God and his mission (110:1, 118:22-23); and as he was dying he turned naturally to the psalms, to express first his anguish ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", 22:1) and then his trust in God at the last ("Into your hand I commit my spirit", 31:5).
I said earlier that there is greater variety in the Book of Psalms than in our church hymnbooks. There isn't time to give examples of all the types of psalms that I mentioned earlier, but I do think it's worth saying a bit more about a type of psalm which may surprise us and which we may tend to neglect, although there are in fact lots of them. These are sometimes called psalms of lament or complaint; they bring before God painful situations, either in the individual's life or in the wider world, and in effect say: "God, this is really bad, and you don't seem to care very much." Not many Christian hymns or songs take that approach, or adopt that tone, towards God, so I think it's particularly helpful for us to reflect on these psalms of lament.
Their presence in the Bible speaks of a real tension in our faith. On the one hand, our first hymn this morning, "All creatures that on earth do dwell", is based closely on Psalm 100, which is all about God's goodness and steadfast love. In the world of Psalm 100 we are the blessed creatures of a wonderful Creator. All there is to do in the world of this psalm is to praise and worship God. But, on the other hand, the psalms of lament take us into a quite different world. For example, Psalm 13 is quite shocking in its bluntness. There's no pious introduction acknowledging, as Psalm 100 does, that God is God and we are just his creatures. It just bursts out: "How long, O Lord?" Psalm 13 questions God, interrogates God, gives God a hard time. "How long, O Lord?" That question is repeated four times: "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will your hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul…? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?" The Psalm doesn't tell us what's causing this pain, but it's clearly a terrible situation and there is no sign of any help coming from God.
So the Book of Psalms requires us to hold together in our hearts and minds the contrast and the tension between these two types of psalms. Psalm 100 is foundational; it expresses the basic Biblical faith: that God is a good and loving Creator; that it is a sheer gift to be alive; and that our proper attitude to God is humble gratitude. That is essential. But there is also a wonderful honesty in many psalms that say, in effect: "Yes, OK, God is good, but that is just not what is filling my mind right now, because all that I can feel is my pain, the pain of my people, the pain of the world. And I am confused, frightened, angry, and I don't know where God is."
This tension is part of Biblical, Christian faith. It's something we all have to cope with if we are both to be honest before God about the difficult stuff that's going on in us, our families and communities, quite apart from the injustice, violence and destruction that are always going on in our world, while at the same time continuing to trust in God our wise and loving Creator. I'm not sure that we're very good in the Church – I mean the Church in general, not this particular congregation – at living in this tension that we find in the Psalms. Not many Christian hymns or songs (that I know, anyway) address God quite as boldly and with such pain as the psalms of lament. And what about our intercessions in church, our prayers in house groups, or our praying on our own? Can we draw on either the actual words or the underlying spirit of such psalms?
I should clarify that to open ourselves to the tradition of Biblical lament that we find in some psalms (as well as in Job and some of the prophets) does not mean grumbling. Biblical lament is nothing like the kind of wearying, destructive, spirit of grumbling which the Bible often condemns. Biblical lament, as in the Psalms, does not mean being paralyzed by negativity but living with our hearts and minds open to the pain of the world and with honesty about the darkness within us and around us, while still trusting the God of all hope, who is with us at the darkest of times and helps us to persevere and find a way forward.
In that positive spirit, I think here of the meeting we held after church one Sunday a year or so ago to discuss the challenges of mental health and our life as a Christian community. Several members of this church spoke openly before one another and before God of the depression, despair and isolation that many of us know either in ourselves or in others we love. It was a very realistic and honest meeting but also an encouraging, hopeful moment in the life of this community. It was a practical way of living in the Biblical tension I've been speaking of and letting it shape how we seek to be a Christian community. It was as if we were saying to God together, as the Psalms do: "We acknowledge and worship you as our faithful Creator, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but at the same time, life is often unbearably hard for many of us, and we're often not sure what to do or how to find your help. Don't be distant from us, God. Be among us, with your light and love, as you have promised to be." At that meeting we made available a selection of Biblical passages for use of those either struggling with mental health difficulties or supporting others in that situation. More than half the passages were from the Book of Psalms. It is the natural first place to look in the Bible when life is dark.
The Book of Psalms. It's a world in which there's a lot to explore. Some of you already know that world well. For others of you, maybe something I've said has whetted your appetite to get to know it better. This Lent may be a good time to do so.
Different options.