Reoriented to Good: Psalm 65
THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
Last Sunday, we encountered a Psalm of complaint (73) voiced by a man named Asaph. He's perplexed; he's losing confidence in God because he doesn't understand how and why the wicked people around him prosper while the righteous suffer. And why isn't God doing anything about it?!? Many of us can identify with Asaph. Some of you might be having a similarly difficult conversation with God as I speak. It's uncanny how the circumstances of the Christian life nearly parallel the experiences of the Psalmists, as if they somehow know where we've been and what we're going through.
I don't know about you, but as we've recited the Psalms together over these past Sundays of Trinity-tide, I'm finding- time and time again- how much I identify with the Psalms as though I've been joined by an insightful guide a spiritual sherpa, a true companion on this journey called the Christian life. One who speaks into the depths of my soul and knows what it is to live and breathe as a child of God in a fallen and broken world, and I'm glad we have incorporated the saying of the Psalms into our Eucharistic liturgy during this Trinity-tide season, standing and saying them each week in unity of voice as we have done so today.
The corporate saying or singing of the Psalms aligns our lips and fills our mouths with the word of God; we speak with one voice. Entering together into the Psalms also aligns our lives because the Psalms express what is common to everyone, running the gamut of what is universally experienced by any baptized child of God. St. Paul expresses this in writing to the Corinthians when he reminds them, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man" (1 Corinthians 10:13). All of us experience and go through the same things, though the circumstances often vary. And by the way, we're not the first to deal with [whatever, fill in the blank]; the road of the Christian life is well-worn by myriads of pilgrims who have walked before us.
The Psalms point to a shared humanity and common life of faith; our individual lives are shared within the communal, the baptized life is incorporated, dwelling within Jesus Christ, who was and is forever perfect humanity, the true and righteous man, and at the same time, very God of very God. Yet his God-ness did not preclude his humanity; he was human in every possible and conceivable sense, except without sin. He was tired after a long day's journey and needed sleep. He hungered and thirsted for bread and water; his heart broke, and he wept; he enjoyed friendship and knew betrayal. He was "tempted in every way," says the writer of Hebrews, meaning he dealt with and experienced the fullness of our humanity (again without sin).
So, friends, no one understands the human experience better than Jesus because he was and is fully human, familiar with its frailty, susceptibilities, sorrows, and external and internal battles. Just because he triumphally resides in heaven doesn't mean he's forgotten all that happened to him on earth; remember, our Lord forever stands in heaven as the wounded healer. Thus, we do not have "a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness" (Heb 4:15) but one who has walked in our shoes.
This is why the Apostles, the Fathers, and saints throughout the ages of the Christian church hear Jesus speaking from within the Psalms: Christ is the creator and center of what it means to be a person experiencing lived humanity. Only a life lived in the person of Christ will have meaning. And this is why the words of the Psalms can pierce our hearts and speak to our innermost being; they are the words of Christ, who is the fullness of all being.
If Jesus Christ is the voice of the Psalms, the very life within them, then death and resurrection are at their center, and this means the Christian life moves between the two poles of death AND resurrection*; this is the rhythm of the Christian life because it is the first and foundational movement in the life of every sinner, which St. Paul teaches, first happens at our baptism, for he says,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Rom 6:3-4).
Our baptized life continues in the same way it started, moving movement from death to life and then life into death.
Surely, we see this in the Psalms themselves: life lived between these two polarities. We read time and time again of life's circumstances move a psalmist "into the pit" either of anger, depression, anxiety, or sorrow because life has an uncanny way of bringing us into death-moments**, moments so disorienting, they disrupt and unsettle the very foundation of our being. This fallen world throws all sorts of curve balls our way. The phone rings, you answer, and you are confronted with tragic news about someone you love. Your head is spinning, your heart is racing as you grapple with shock and perplexity, and you can't even stand; in an instance, you moved from life to death. Or after six months of unemployment, thinking you've nailed the final interview, you open an email stating, "We've decided to go in a different direction." Disoriented by an unforeseen death moment.
Disorientation such as this ultimately expresses itself in lament. It shouldn't be lost on us that nearly sixty-five of the one hundred and fifty Psalms are Psalms of Lament because, in the throes of death, only lament can adequately give voice to anger, frustration, and confusion over why or how this could have happened and how or why the Lord seems absent at the very moment we (either corporately or individually) need him so desperately.
Sometimes, these death-moments seem to last a lifetime as we helplessly watch an aging spouse or parent gradually decline from cognitive or physical illness. Or as we stand on the frontline of a child or friend battling addiction in a war without end. But whether it be days or years, everyone who calls themselves a Christian and walks under the banner of Christ will come face to face with these death-moments. If we follow Christ and love him and not the world, then we will share in his suffering. Jesus told his disciples, "The son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed." We suffer these death-moments because Jesus, the true man, also suffered them (1 Pt 2:21). But there is such a thing as the Gospel, and it is true. As I stated earlier, death isn't the only movement experienced in the baptized life because the Gospel moves death into resurrection; this is the critical second movement that takes us "out of the pit."
If Asaph's Psalm of perplexity and confusion over why the wicked seem to prosper while the righteous suffer, crying out to God from the pit of a death moment, then today's Psalm sixty-five, is a song of resurrection, a hymn sung by the one who has been divinely delivered "from the pit" and brought into a welcome and pleasurable place; into the fullness of Divine blessing, rejoicing, laughter, and song. Today's Psalmist has been brought from death into life and reoriented to the goodness of God.
Unlike last week's Psalm, the author and circumstances of Psalm 65 are less clear. Some have placed it in the time of Haggai and Zechariah when Israel returned from her long captivity and the rebuilding of the Temple. This Psalm has been ascribed, as found in the Syriac Psalter, to the festival held by David on that great occasion when the Ark was finally brought back to Jerusalem. A third view is a Psalm of Thanksgiving written for the Levites to sing in the Temple after God stopped a long and painful drought by dropping rain upon the land.
Whatever the circumstances may have moved the Psalmist to voice such glorious praise and thanksgiving, this is certain: Divine action moved the people from death to resurrection. Because in each case, God lifted them out of their death moment by saving them from the hardships of captivity and bringing them home; by filling the absence of his presence by returning the Ark; by once again, filling their tables and bellies by sending rain to produce a bountiful harvest. Whatever pit they found themselves in, the result was the same: they were mired in death, and God acted in the depths of hardship. He moved them into life and reoriented them to his love, mercy, and goodness.
"THOU, O God, art praised in Sion; and unto thee shall the vow be performed in Jerusalem. Thou that hearest the prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come" (vv. 1-2). If death brings tears, then resurrection should always illicit praise and thanksgiving; the praise of those restored is to come to the Lord into his Holy Hill and offer thanksgiving. Those whom the Lord has rescued from the death-moments of life are to praise him and offer a sacrifice, taking up and performing their vow to God. A sincerity of life always demonstrates sincere praise; we show our thanks to God by walking out this Christian life in a pleasing manner that glorifies and magnifies the Lord.
At our baptism, we vowed to "renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh, to neither follow nor be led by them" (BCP, 276)." And this is becoming (as St. Paul told us) of those for whom Christ was crucified for in him we have been crucified unto the world" (Gal 6:13). Christian vow-keeping is only a possibility because we have been brought out of the death moment of sin and raised anew in Christ; we are (in the words of the Apostle) "a new creation," Grace has reoriented our death moment to eternal and everlasting life in Christ Jesus our Lord. How, then, can we serve two masters? We can't; we mustn't because resurrection reorients to life, sin disorients, riddles the conscience, and drags us back into the pit of death.
Thus, St. Paul exhorts us this morning to be led by the Spirit of life, turning all sorts of things that can only reorient us to death, for “they which do such things (he says) shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” No, a life reoriented to the good is known by the fruit of Life, producing “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,” and, even when faced with death, we are blessed because God moved first to reorient us from death to life: "Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and receivest unto thee: he shall dwell in thy court and shall be satisfied with the pleasures of thy house, even of thy holy temple" (Ps 65:4).
The next time life leads you into a death moment, remember this: God is the God of resurrection; he will not leave you in the pit, for
he stills the raging of the sea and the madness of the peoples… the river of God is full of water... he sends rain into barren valleys... he makes the sheepfolds full... his goodness fills the wilderness... the land stands so full of corn that even the hills laugh and sing (Ps 65 paraphrased).
Therefore, my friends, be anxious for nothing, not even in the face of death, for God shall act, and in the end of this life, "all flesh shall come to him" (Ps 65:2), for we will literally be raised from death and enter the fullness of His goodness." Amen+
**In Walter Brueggemann’s book Praying the Psalms, he develops the helpful paradigm of death to life, reorientation to orientation.
*I’m indebted to Andrew Root for the language of death-moments, those difficult and dark times when God meets us.
