PSALM 80      LET THY FACE SHINE

29^TH NOVEMBER 2020 – ADVENT SUNDAY

As the psalms often show we humans are ‘Janus’ faced: we look forward to the coming times, and backward to the past and combine them in our thoughts and decisions. This poem looks to the distant past – some have a ‘good times’ view, but some in more recent times are of major dislocation.

Because of the mention of Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh the psalm’s writing can safely be dated to the time of the Assyrian invasion when the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes of Israel and threatened Jerusalem. In this critical situation the tribes have assembled in the sanctuary to bring before God their lament, their supplications, and their intercessions

1     Hear O Shepherd of Israel you that led Joseph like a flock:
you that are enthroned upon the cherubim shine out in glory;

2     Before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh:
stir up your power and come to save us.

These two verses are an invocation to the Almighty because a disaster has already overtaken them (Assyrians, drought, famine) led to the calling of the people together to lay their common complaint to God. It follows the pattern of communal payer. The first part is a remembrance or a reminder to God of his care for them in past ages. Having presented that picture to God the people respond with the first request in the chorus, probably said by all the people, for God to act.

3     Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

In his power he merely must shrug his shoulder and the people are saved. Verse 3 shows the strong faith of the community who believe this is possible on God’s part if he turns again and brings about that encounter in the theophany from which all divine blessings flow.

4     O Lord God of hosts:
how long will you be angry at your people’s prayer?

5     You have fed them with the bread a of tears:
and given them tears to drink in good measure.

6     You have made us the victim of our neighbours:
and our enemies laugh us to scorn.

Verses 4-6 reflect the affliction of God’s people is fundamentally a trial of their faith. They suffer from being separated from God, from being subject to his anger, though they are probably not without a sense of their own guilt. The faithful who have lost confidence in their God give vent to their bitter disappointment in the supressed irony of the statement that the food and drink that they are indebted to their God consisted in a full measure of tears. The land that they had been promised was now wrenched away and given to those ‘who laugh us to scorn’.

7.    Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

Despite the preceding picture of dislocation, the people still cry out in faith.

17   Let your power rest on the man at your right hand:
on that son of man whom you made so strong for yourself.

18   And so we shall not turn back from you:
give us life and we will call upon your name.

The cult community envisages once more the seriousness of their position. They do not shun the bitter truth that their very existence is imperilled, not only their material position but their innermost being; for he who threatens them is God himself. In this situation the faithful thus threatened make one last effort, a last bold venture, and in supplication throw themselves into the arms of this God. It is precisely because it is God who threatens them that he is their only help and that their affliction cannot be his final word. Verse 17 echoes the new testament picture of Jesus, the one at the right hand of God the Father – no wonder this was a popular psalm for Christians who saw their fulfilment in the coming of Christ Jesus.

19   Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show as the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

The affliction of their life of prayer, movingly expressed in the lament in verse 4, is thus overcome. Only now, too, the radiant light of the divine presence appears in all its fullness in the refrain’s petition, in which the people of God, assured of their salvation, find their way back to God and to themselves.

Thank you Fr Graham Alston for your weekly commentary on the appointed psalm.

PSALM 100 – Make a joyful noise to the Lord all you lands!

PSALM 100 – Make a joyful noise to the Lord all you lands!

SUNDAY 22^ND NOVEMBER 2021

CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY

1.         O shout to the Lord in triumph all the earth:
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his face with songs of joy.

2.         Know that the Lord he is God:
 it is he who has made us, and we are his we are his people
and the sheep of his pasture.

3.         Come into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise:
give thanks to him and bless his holy name.

4.         For the Lord is good his mercy is for ever:
his faithfulness throughout all generations.

 

Imagine that you are in the vast golden courtyard of the temple when music sounds and choir of men sing out:

O shout to the Lord in triumph all the earth: serve the Lord with gladness and come before his face with songs of joy.

And you know, like the bells that ring at the start of our worship that worship is about to begin! We gather, moving toward the great fire of the holocaust altar and the bronze sea, the excitement is almost palpable. The chorus replies and with all your fellows you sing out the refrain:

Know that the Lord he is God: it is he who has made us, and we are his we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

There is a real sense of expectancy and hope, things have not been going well since last spring; there was a low yield to the barley, and two of your sheep were killed by lions. The political situation was all topsy-turvy with the Egyptians to the south and rumblings of the Assyrians to the north. The high priest and his fellow priests are tense and upset because of this prophetic activity, going on around Jerusalem.

All this pales into the background of your mind as the rest of the people join with the priestly choir and respond with heartfelt joy:

Come into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise:
give thanks to him and bless his holy name.

There is lots of movement as the crowd streams upwards and toward the singers. You murmur that ‘Yes, it is good to give him thanks.’ This where I belong as a member of the people of Israel despite the things that may have gone wrong it is still the Lord God who has rescued me and my family, and I am here to give him praise!

For the Lord is good his mercy is for ever:
his faithfulness throughout all generations.

Despite the lows of the year, and the problems we still face I can still say, ‘For the Lord is good his mercy is for ever’. And this is the chorus of all my fellow Israelites!

The joy expressed in this psalm is simultaneously derived from God and joy in God; it emanates from him and returns to him, and in that process lies the deepest meaning of old testament worship. The hymn ‘Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices’ shows that the Christian church, too, lives by this fountain of piety.

Thank you Fr Graham Alston for your weekly narrative of the psalms.

 

PSALM 123 LOOKING UPWARDS TO GOD (A pilgrim's song)

 

PSALM 123      LOOKING UPWARDS TO GOD (A pilgrim song)

APPOINTED PSALM - SUNDAY 15TH NOVEMBER 2020

MISSION SUNDAY

This brief and unpretentious prayer is grouped around a single word-picture imbued with moving tenderness. It springs from disposition of heartfelt and profound piety. Here an individual takes the affliction of his people so greatly to his heart that he makes it the object of his prayer; even from a purely stylistic point of view this has been expressed by the transition from the style of personal prayer to that of community prayer.

1   To you I lift up my eyes:
you who are enthroned in the heavens.

The background of the psalm can be inferred from vv. 3 f. The nation has long been exposed to the contempt and scorn of arrogant adversaries. This may be that the poem was written when the pressure weighed heavily upon the people in post-exilic times under the overlordship of Persia; it is, however, also possible that their affliction has been due to conflicts within the nation itself. The words which the worshipper uses in his opening prayer make clear how he conceives of his own position in relation to God. Amid the distress caused by his depressing situation he has lift his eyes to him who sits enthroned in heaven. In doing so he is aware of the immense difference between his human powerlessness and the greatness of the power of the heavenly King, on which alone he depends. His words express humble submission, but at the same time also firm trust.

2   As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master:
or as the eyes of a maid toward the hand of her mistress,

His consciousness of the attitude that is fitting before Yahweh is expressed even more distinctly in the peculiar line he takes in meditation in v. 2. He no longer visualizes himself as being alone face to face with God—after all, it is not a private concern which he presents in his prayer——but unites in a fellowship of prayer with his fellow believers, who with yearning await their encounter with God. The poet expresses in a simple and impressive simile what links the members of the congregation together before God in their common affliction. Like the eyes of the servants to the hand of their master and the eyes of the maids to the hand of their mistress, so their eyes look to God, their Lord. It expresses reverential awe, submission and humility, which are the result of the awareness of being utterly dependent on the sovereign will and power of God, as on the Lord with whom nobody can interfere; but at the same time it also expresses devoted love and trustful hope in the fatherly care that God, as the Lord, will give his own. It is only when both these sentiments combine that the genuine attitude of prayer is achieved. Reverential awe restrains the worshipper from encroaching upon the majesty of God through importunate petition, while trusting love alone makes it possible for him to pray with confidence and to confide his affliction to God in prayer. Thus at the end of the verse the waiting for the moment when God will appear and ‘look graciously upon’ his people is not to be understood in the sense that the members of the congregation want to press their human desires on God, but rather that in spite of the utter urgency of their concern they are yet satisfied to wait patiently upon the Lord, to whom they show the honour due to him by their whole-hearted surrender to his mercy. This has nothing whatsoever to do with a cowardly ‘slave mentality’; on the contrary, only by humbly submitting to God is man set free from any kind of cringing submission to the power of men, so that he is able to resist any attempt to bring him low through human pressure.

3   So our eyes look to the Lord our God:
until he shows us his mercy.

4   Have mercy upon us O Lord have mercy upon us:
for we have had our fill of derision.

The humble trust with which the worshipper lifts his eyes to God provides the background for his petition, ‘Be gracious to us, O Lord.’ The poet is a man of few words. His attitude expresses the spirit of prayer more effectively than an abundance of fine words could do. It is not until he adds a reason to his petition that the tenderness of his trust and the purity and restraint of his surrender to God appear in their true light; for it makes us realize how grievously the worshipper and his people suffer from the contempt of the proud oppressors, so that the lifting up of his eyes to God is the only light that shines in that darkness.

5   Our souls overflow with the mockery of those at ease:
and with the contempt of the proud.

And when he candidly confesses before him that humanly speaking all patience to endure such scorn is at an end, even these words of bitter complaint still reflect that heartfelt trustfulness which makes the whole poem one of the finest examples of piety, expressed in prayer – simple, truthful, natural and sincere.

Thank you Fr Graham Alston for your weekly narrative on the appointed psalm.

PSALM 78 – RIDDLES PRESENTED BY HISTORY

 

PSALM 78 – RIDDLES PRESENTED BY HISTORY

APPOINTED PSALM FOR SUNDAY 8^TH NOVEMBER 2020

22^ND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

History is always a subject of intrigue – it is studied and read with the intention of trying to understand the vagaries of human behaviour. The Hebrew or Israelites had a strong sense of history because their God met with them and communicated with them, making promises and asking for their commitment to him. Much of the Old Testament deals with the historical and covenantal relationship of these people with their God. This is a God who makes covenant with a people who regularly break the covenant.

1       Give heed to my teaching O my people:
incline your ears to the words of my mouth,

2       For I will open my mouth in a parable:
and expound the mysteries of former times.

This an instructive poem of some 72 verses, we read only some 7 verses and from them we discover the riddles of history that affected the way people thought in the days before the Kingdom of Israel was divided at the end of Solomon’s reign. So, the leader of the liturgy would use these words to call people’s attention to what is taking place.

3       What we have heard and known:
what our forefathers have told us,

4       We will not hide from their children
but declare to a generation yet to come:
the praiseworthy acts of the Lord
his mighty and wonderful works.

The people are raised to pass on the historic traditions to the children that come after them. The rituals that take place each year may be not clear to the young ones but the responsibility to pass it on is in the hands of the parents. They are there not to have good time worshipping but to take that into their hearts and give it to their children so that it is ‘declared to a generation yet to come.’ We have not always done that with our own children - been enthusiastic about the fact you have lived dependent on God so far, so that they catch the excitement of being with God.

5       He established a law in Jacob and made a decree in Israel:
which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children,

The historical is suggested in the naming of Jacob, one of the patriarchs who wrestled with God and received a promise of land. That promise was based upon a commitment to keep God’s rules and ordinances and being faithful and obedient through them to God.

6       That future generations might know
and the children yet unborn:
that they in turn might teach it to their sons;

7       So that they might put their confidence in God:
and not forget his works but keep his commandments,

The poem attempts to remind the people that they had, at some stage in their journey with God, failed him. The objective of the psalm is an attempt to prevent this past failure occurring in the next generation. We need to be sure of our traditions so that our children can be included in the benefits of walking with God.

Thank you Fr Graham Alston for your weekly narrative on the appointed psalms