The Psalms: Prayerbook of the Faithful
December 30, 2012 | Anita Retzlaff | Psalm 88; Psalm 95; Psalm 121
Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
Praise him in his mighty firmament!...
Let everything that breathes Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD! (Psalm 150)
The last psalm, Psalm 150, is praise over the top! “Let everything that breathes praise the LORD! It can’t be more inclusive than that. We know the psalms first and foremost as a testimony to the goodness of God and the praise offered up by the community of God’s faithful. The Psalter - which is another name for the Book of Psalms – the Psalter is filled with majestic poetry about the greatness of God and the whole of creation. There are psalms that glorify the Holy City Zion, the kings who inhabit it, the Temple within it and the nation Israel that gathers around it, the center of revelation and the manifestation of the holiness of God. There is great joy and thanksgiving expressed in the Psalms.
And yet the beauty of this book is that it expresses every other emotion and experience that we human beings know. I challenge you all to take a look into the Psalms and try to find a significant human emotion that is not included. In fact, how many of you, if given a bible and a bit of time could find something in the Psalms that is descriptive of your experience? I am going to ask for a show of hands: how many of you think you could find a passage from Psalms that describes some important experience, some need in your life or a word of comfort for you when the going gets tough? This indeed is the prayerbook of the faithful. We go to the Psalms to find solace and comfort and affirmation for our life’s journey.
As I have already suggested and as many of you know, these are not merely prayers of happiness and gratitude. The Psalms are riddled with cries of lament, calls for justice and even demands for vengeance. Example: Psalm 58. “O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!.... Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime; like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.” That is pretty vile stuff and it is included in our scriptures. There isn’t much about our ordinary lives that can’t be uttered in the presence of God.
Psalms are both short and long; 2 verses constitute the entirety of Psalm 117 and two psalms later in 119 you will find 176 verses. There are psalms of gratitude, of contemplation, of trust and of appeals for mercy. These are sometimes the words of an individual and other times the desire of the whole community. That is why the psalms are so wonderful for worship and also for reflection; they express the need of each one of us individually and all of us corporately – and usually at the same time. Where else can you open a book and find a prayer of gratitude, a call for protection, a sigh of despondency, a desire for pardon, for healing, for judgment, for victory, for protection and for unity? It is all to be found in our book of Psalms, in Holy Scripture.
The psalms presuppose a relationship. God is ready to receive our anger, our disappointment, our longing and our need. We are free to express our rage, gratitude, lament, rejection, joy, fear, guilt and trust. We need God and God needs us and therefore deep calls to deep. In seeking God’s heart we are free to offer up everything that is held in our hearts. The psalms testify to the love that God has for us and us for God. So that is why we can find our stories written into the poetry of the psalms. That is why so many psalms have been put to music, referred to in plays and movies and books. The Psalms are a reflection of life, of human experience, of life with God. The Psalms is our prayerbook and in that capacity I along with Kelsey and Lydia will share briefly about the ways in which the Psalms have affected our lives.
Psalm 88
I will begin with Psalm 88. The significance of this psalm for me is the way in which it does not mince words. The writer feels like life is hopeless and that God has left him defenseless before his enemies; that God has abandoned him. What is unique about this psalm is that it ends without any sign of hope. That is unusual in our scripture for in most writing there is some expression of faith in God’s mercy and hope for the future. Not here. (Read 88:8-18) Reading this some twenty years ago was a sign of promise for me, as strange as that may sound. I figured that if God can bear this kind of direct accusation; if this is allowable in scripture then there might indeed be a place for me in God’s heart.
Kelsey Dick – Psalm 31
Psalm 95
Excerpts from Psalm 95:
O come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence
with thanksgiving;
Let us make a joyful noise to
him with songs of praise!
O come let us worship and bow
down,
let us kneel before the LORD,
our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his
pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-7
What an exhilarating call to worship! I love it! There is such a feeling of joy and majesty in this psalm; that when we gather to worship, God is present with power. The words are convincing and compelling. God is with us as the rock of our salvation and so we have nothing to fear. Not only is God our strength, God is also our Maker, the One who creates us in the first place. And God is also a shepherd. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. The language of love is beautiful in this psalm and such a fitting call for us to come together in worship and praise.
Lydia Wiens – Psalm 139
Psalm 121
(Read Psalm 121)
There is no other psalm for me that better expresses God’s care. God is our keeper, the one who watches over us, tends and cares for us and never lets us go – even in death. Is there anything in our experience that promises more than what God offers us in the poetry of Psalm 121? That is why these words are beautifully received at a funeral or prayer service or burial at which time we all need the assurance that God does not leave us. This, to me, is the meaning of eternity:
The LORD will keep you from all
evil;
He will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your
going out and your
coming in
from this time on and
forevermore.
Psalm 121:7-8
I am certain that if we had time and opportunity we could spend hours sharing excerpts from the psalms with each other. The poetry, the beauty, the directness of the words describes our lives; the range of emotions, the sometimes brutal reality and the ceaseless hope with which we live are included as intimate encounter with God. We are richly blessed by the language of the Psalter for not only does it call God to account, it simultaneously calls on us to wait upon God’s mercy. And so indeed truly the Psalms are the prayer book of the faithful; they are the prayers we utter. They are ours. AMEN
