Praying this Psalm on the heels of All Saints Day (celebrated on an actual Sunday no less!) has me thinking about this psalm in a few different ways.
First, the opening two verses make a wonderful Call to Worship, or even an Act of Praise: I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.
Then in verses three and four come the real crux of the psalm, which is spoken, but left, seemingly innocuous, until it is picked up again at the very end of this lengthy psalm: You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: ‘I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations.’”
Then verses 5-18 extol God’s mighty saving acts throughout the history of the people Israel. These verses would fit beautifully into a Great Thanksgiving when celebrating Holy Communion: “It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies… For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel. And so with your people on earth and all the company of heaven we praise your name and join their unending hymn:”
I LOVE when I find liturgy in Scripture! (Yes, I know that places me a in a particularly nerdy set of preachers…)
In the next section, vv 19-37, the psalmist seems to be innocently recounting God’s raising up of David. Considering it’s juxtaposition with the previous verses, at first blush it appears to just be a continuance of praise of God’s power and might, but the scope zooms down from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from all of Creation to King David. Notice, I said “appears.”
Only in verses 38-45 does it become clear as to what the psalmist is doing. The tone changes from joyful celebration and remembrance, to anguished recounting: But now you have spurned and rejected him; You have renounced the covenant; You have broken through all his walls, You have exalted the right hand of his foes, You have turned back the edge of his sword, You have removed the scepter from his hand, you have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame!
And here we begin to hear the echo of lament from Psalm 13, How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? The psalmist is reminding God of the covenant promise, the promise which cannot be broken. This isn’t a contract, it’s a covenant. No one is released from the binding details for unfaithfulness. The cords of love cannot be broken, even by disobedience.
The psalmist reminds God how short our time on earth is and asks God to honor the covenant of steadfast love, asking God to hear the taunts and the insults hurled upon God’s first born, the people Israel. And just as abruptly, the psalmist ends: “Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and Amen.”
No more is necessary. The Lord knows the covenant. A simple reminder will do. There is no need to belabor or bludgeon the point.
I think we (me) as western Christians too often forget that it’s okay to question God and to call God back to covenant faithfulness. I think we too often hear God’s words of reprimand to Job and think it is not our place to question God’s action or inaction, that such questioning equates to questioning God’s sovereignty. As is clear in this psalm, and throughout Scripture, such is not the case.
We are built, hard-wired, to question, to challenge, to wrestle like Jacob at the Jabok, and by such wrestling we are blessed. We are forever changed, perhaps with a limp to show for our struggle, but nonetheless, blessed on account of the struggle.
I think it is only after praying words like this, calling God back to the covenant promise that we are able to find that perhaps it was us, and not God, who wandered from the covenant in the first place. Only in reminding God to be God, do we adequately remind ourselves to be God’s covenant peoples, steadfast in love and faithfulness.
Blessed be the Lord forever.
Amen and Amen.
