Psalms: Salvation History

Psalm 105

            This lent we will be focusing on the psalms and what they have to say to us, what they have to teach us, their piece in our faith lives.  As part of that, today I want to give a brief overview and then we will focus on psalms of history, psalm 105 being one of those. 
            The psalms are a collection of prayers, poems and songs that express to God and to God’s people a wide spectrum of human experience and emotion.  As such they express praise, thanksgiving, wonder, doubt, faith, lament, grief, trust, hope, joy, sorrow.  The psalms reflect all of these feelings, as well as all sorts of human experiences, and they do so as a way of connecting with, honoring and reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  As theologian Eugene Peterson says it, “When we pray the psalms, we enter into the centuries-long experience of being a people of God.”  Many of the psalms are attributed to King David, but not all of them.  Scholars have identified different types of psalms, and while many of the psalms fit into more than one category, generally, for our understanding and study, they are divided into the following different types:
Hymns of praise,
Enthronement hymns which recognize God as King over all the world,
Songs of Zion which recognize and lift up Jerusalem as God’s holy city,
Songs of lament,
Songs of trust,
Sacred History psalms which look at the history of God’s people,
Royal psalms which focus on ways in which God is actively involved in the politics, battles and national work of Israel,
Songs of thanksgiving,
Wisdom psalms which contain short memorable wise sayings,
And liturgies that were used in festivals and other worship experiences in the temple.
          If any of you would like a list of these different kinds of psalms with the psalm numbers that tell you which psalm fits into which category, I would be happy to provide those for you.
          As I said before, the psalms are prayers, they are hymns, they are poetry.  As hymns, they were sung, many as part of worship services.  As poetry, they tap deep into human experience, touching mind, soul, heart, and spirit.  No matter what you are feeling or thinking, a psalm can be found that mirrors where you are, that speaks for you, reassures you that you are not alone in that experience, and in those feelings as they connect to the Divine One.  The psalms call you into a deeper connection with yourself as well as with God.  In this way, psalms are very personal, and invite us into the second half of the second commandment to love neighbor AS self (or, in this case, to love yourself even as you love your neighbor!).  The psalms invite us to take the time to focus on our own spiritual journeys and to offer up prayers, thoughts, and songs as a way of caring for ourselves, since a deeper connection to God IS a way to care for yourself as well.  As prayers, they give us words when our own words do not feel complete or do not feel enough.  They give us words that have been said over the centuries, and prayers that therefore connect us not only to our own experiences but to our tradition and to those throughout the centuries who have prayed these same words before us.
         The psalms are also teachers, not only of how to pray, but of who God is, and of who we are as God’s people.  The psalms of history contribute in a special way to teaching and connecting us.  Today’s psalm is one of the psalms that recounts the history of the Jewish people and casts that history in a light that gives special focus to God’s role in that history.  In telling history through the psalm, we express care for our faith community and for ourselves as individuals.  We know ourselves and are known by others according to the stories we hear, remember, and retell about who we are.  We are shaped by the traditions with which we identify and we reshape those same traditions as we pass them onto others.  There is, therefore, great purpose and great meaning in retelling the stories, in inviting them to remind us who we are, WHOSE we are and why we are. 
        I read a recent study on the well-being of children.  And one of the strongest and most surprising finds was that when children know their history, and by that I mean their extended history, the history of their parents and grandparents, they fare much better, make better choices, tend to be more successful as adults, are happier, healthier, feel more grounded, more connected, and more confident in life than when they don’t.  Think about the truth of this: no matter what kind of support and grounding we give to kids who are adopted, I’ve supported many of these kids as young adults who often have felt a sense of being lost, a strong desire to connect to their biological history, and a stronger sense of connection and continuance when they do know BOTH their biological family’s history as well as the history of the family into which they’ve been adopted.  When we know where we are from, when we have a connection to the past as well as to the present and the future, we feel grounded.  We know ourselves better.  We see the long arc of history that can allow us to remember that whatever we are experiencing in this moment is tiny in the scope of time.  We have a stronger sense of long-term connection to everything when we know where we are from and what has created us in this time and in this place to be exactly who we are today. 
         These history psalms invite us into that time of remembrance, of re-centering in the story, or recommitting to being the people of God with a history, with a faith tradition and faith community, with a purpose and a meaning.  They invite us to step back and to see the bigger picture of God’s movement through time.  No matter what is going on today or how we are feeling in the moment, when we look at history, when we reflect on not only our own personal lives and history, but on the history of all of God’s people, we see God active and present, interacting with us, never leaving us alone, calling us ever deeper into our faith and into relationship with God. 
        Bernard Anderson describes the psalms as “the songs that accompany the people of God on their journey through history.”  When we engage the psalms, and today as we engage the sacred history psalms, we invite the story to be our guide as we continue on our journeys with God.
             Even when the psalms of history reflect on hard times, on tragic times, naming those times and singing them reminds us that we walk even the hard times together – together with one another and together with God as God’s people.  Psalm 137, which also tells part of the story of God’s people, reflects this. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.  On the willows there we hung up our harps.  For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’  How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?  If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!  Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mount, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”   This psalm reflects the time when in 586 B.C. Jerusalem was captured and burned, the Temple destroyed by the king of Babylon, and thousands of people from Judah were taken into exile in Babylon.  This psalm recalls the pain and anguish of a displaced people in grief for their capital, for their temple, for their home for God.  I would like us to take a moment to sing this psalm together. And as we do, I invite you to feel the pain of the exiled Israelites, but also to see if singing their pain allows you to express grief, too, for things that you have lost as well – for those times when there is nothing to do except sit down and weep for what has passed…. #784
            What was that like for you to sing this psalm?
            In contrast to the reflection of history that shows pain and grief, today’s scripture reading was psalm 105 and after the sermon we will sing another history psalm, psalm 136.  Both of these reflect the beauty of God’s saving action through history.   Psalm 136 interjects the phrase, “God’s love endures forever” after every line.  We will sing, “for your love is never ending” as the alternate line each time reminding us that God does act, is acting, continues to act with love every day and in every place, even when we sit by the waters of Babylon and weep.
            Whether we are telling a story of sorrow or telling a story of God’s acts of salvation, it is the telling of those stories that grounds us, gives us continuity in our own stories, helps us understand who we are, and helps us to see God in history.
            I think about the movie, “Secondhand Lions”.  For those who have not seen it, a neglected boy is left with great uncles whom he has never even met for a summer by a mother who is more interested in meeting men than in caring for her boy.  Walter quickly engages his uncles in telling him stories of their adventures in Africa.  Until the very end of the movie, we don’t know if these stories are true or not.  But what becomes very apparent throughout the movie is that the telling of these stories, these histories, is life-giving to Walter, regardless of the veracity of the stories themselves.  The stories teach him what it is to be brave, what it is to be a man, what it is to be loving and faithful and strong and courageous.  They ground him and connect him to a sense of family that is more than just the here and now.  They transform him from being a boy who feels nothing but rejection, who is scared of his own shadow, who cannot stand up for himself into a boy who does stand up for himself and for those he loves, who claims his own rights and claims his own life.  The stories gave him the strength to be a person with hopes, dreams and a future. 
          Madeleine L’Engle, who wrote many wonderful Christian children’s stories, including A Wrinkle in Time, says that stories are incredibly important because they tell us who we are, and who God is in relation to us.  She says they do this more deeply than almost anything else because the stories get into our psyches, and transform us into God’s people.  The sacred history psalms are an important part of that story telling, combining the poetry that speaks to our hearts with the stories that speak to our imaginations about who we are.
            Psalm 78, another history psalm, begins with details about the way in which we are to hear the stories of God’s amazing work in history.  You can read the psalm yourself, but it is very long, so I will just sum up the call for us.  We are expected:
1.      To listen to the teachings.
2.     To tell others what God has done
3.     To teach our children
4.     To set our hope in God
5.     To not forget the works of God
6.     To keep God’s commandments
7.     And finally, to NOT be like our ancestors – in other words, to learn from history, and to choose a different path forward. 
           Each sacred history psalm, even when it tells stories of sorrow, also presents the same vision of God – the one who has done wondrous deeds, who has acted with justice, who brings salvation, who loves, forgives and rescues.  That is the story we are called to tell again and again with these psalms, with our songs, with our prayers, and with our readings. 
         I want to finish today by having us pray together a piece of Psalm 77.  Please join me in prayer:
           I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
           I will remember your wonders of old.
           I will meditate on all your work,
           And muse on your mighty deeds.
          Your way, O God, is holy.
            What god is so great as our God?
          You are the God who works wonders;
            You have displayed your might among the people.
         With your strong arm you redeemed your people,
            The descendants of Jacob and Joseph.  Amen.