Re-group

Recently I was leaving the house taking the kids somewhere.  We were three blocks away, when we suddenly realized we'd forgot something vital to where we were going.  So, we turned around and went back home.  The details of where we were and what we forgot are not really as important as the truth that practically everyone I know can tell a similar story.  

You are on the way to work and you forgot your lunch.

You are on the way to a birthday party and forgot the present

You are on the way to football practice and your intelligent son only has one shoe on.

These things happen to us all the time...or at least some of the things above happen all the time :)

In the midst of the journey of life and faith, U-turns happen.

I feel that way as I have not only been reading the Psalms each day, but also I have been reading about the Psalms.  Reading other people's perspectives on the psalms helps ground me and guide me as I wade my way through these ancient poems and hymns that speak honestly and in heartfelt ways to God.  One of the authors I just finished caused me to pull a U-turn on the Psalms.  The insight comes from Walter Brueggemann who is a UCC pastor, poet, theologian and teacher.  He is passionate about the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms.

In the essay I read he makes a case that we often read each psalm individually without connecting one Psalm to the next.  I confess that I had not been thinking much about the overall shape and story of the whole book.  I often engage Psalm 23 and think I can easily skip to Psalm 121 without missing a beat.  Brueggemann contends that the Psalms are trying to make a point between Psalm 1 and 150, trying to suggest something important to us.

Psalm 1 begins as a statement about faith and life.  The Psalmist begins with a claim about happiness, that our happiness comes from avoiding the wicked's counsel, not standing only in the complaint department line of life, and not sitting around with scoffers.  When we find ourselves in those locations, we can become like chaff blown about by the wind.  It is true.  If I watch too much cable news, I start to feel my soul sour and my hope wither.  Being cynical is contagious.  Instead, Psalm 1 says if we follow the Torah (teachings and commandments of God) life will be good.  That is the starting place of the Psalms.

Then for 148 psalms, Brueggemann says, the writers bump up against all the ways Psalm 1 just isn't always the case.  There are moments when you do follow the wisdom of God and others end up laughing at you.  There are moments you love another person and she breaks your heart.  There are moments you struggle, we struggle, the poor are oppressed, and bad things happen to good people.  That is why the first book of Psalms (psalms 1-41) are so heart-breakingly difficult to read.  Psalm 1 made a promise about God's world, but the reality of life and especially suffering contradicts that promise.  The real world doesn't always play by the simplistic view and pathway of Psalm 1, several Psalms shine a light brightly on that truth.

But by the time we get to Psalm 150, the psalmist is not in a fit of depression or despair.  Instead, the Psalmist is down right giddy and singing with gusto, for seemingly no reason at all!  The Psalmist doesn't give any rationale for giving God praise, other than the fact that God is God.  

To be sure, if all you read was Psalm 1 and then jumped to the end with Psalm 150, if you skipped the suffering, then it would be easy to think the Psalmist doesn't really know what life is like.  But in-between there is much struggle, pain is honestly named, and prayers for God to be God are shouted at the top of the Psalmist's lungs.  So, but the time you get near the end of the Psalms, you start to realize that our human orientation is toward offering our praise to God, not as a way to eschew our suffering, but as a way of naming the reality that praise can happen even when tears fall from our eyes.

While Brueggemann doesn't say it, that seems to me that is the meta-narrative of Scripture itself.  We begin with God speaking in Genesis 1 and God's fingerprints upon humanity in Psalm 2.  A statement of the goodness of our world and of our relationships to each other and God.  That, like in the Psalms, lasts for exactly one chapter!  By Genesis 3, humanity is hiding from God, pointing fingers at who is to blame for eating the fruit, and generally causing God much heartache.  If you leap all the way to Revelation, there is a new creation where all the nations stream to God and sing praise to God.  God doesn't end up destroying creation or condemning people.  God, being God, is a light that we all stream to for warmth and hope and peace and to awaken a song within us all.  In-between Genesis and Revelation is struggle, pain is honestly named - sometimes avoided- and life as we know it is spilled out across the pages of the Bible.

From a tree where Adam and Eve feasted on a fig to the trees by the river of life that bear fruit in its season in Revelation, God does not dismiss or cause our suffering.  God is there in the midst of our suffering and we call upon God because we believe God can offer us strength and hope and even awaken a hymn of praise...even if it is quiet praise...in the valley of the shadow of death.

I pray these insights are helpful for those of you trudging along with me in the psalms.  I pray this U-turn offers a trace of God's grace in the midst of our reading the psalms together offering us courage and insights into the connections between these poems and hymns of our ancestors.

Blessings!