Eric W. Sayers

The text: Psalm 150 – NRSV

The day has arrived! This is no “little Easter” in Lent. This is the “Big Easter”, the Great Day, the turning of the calendar and the reshaping of the world. On this day we celebrate the exclamation point of the psalter, the very last psalm. This short, bombastic, almost out of control song calls us to throw off regular order and shout our praise in a most unruly fashion. This is a “turn every light in the house on” psalm and a “gather every instrument and every person (regardless of musical talent) you can find” and create a joyful noise! And a loud noise at that! I am reminded of a celebration of that other great Christian festival, Christmas, as described in Whoville in the famous Dr. Seuss cartoon:

They’ll blow their floofloovers! They’ll bang their tartookas!
They’ll blow their whohoopers! They’ll bang their gardookas!
They’ll spin their trumtookas! They’ll slam their slooslunkas!
They’ll beat their blumbloopas! They’ll wham their whowonkas!

Not long from now I will be directing several musical groups in worship in an attempt make a very orderly joyful noise produced by people and instruments coming in at exactly the right times and singing exactly the right notes in a very harmonious fashion. Not so with this psalm!

Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud, clashing cymbals!

Harmony is not the idea here. Rather, it is barely controlled exuberance, loud and clashing, not necessarily in tune, not necessarily in time, and most certainly disruptive in our nice, normal, well-planned worship services. It is as if the energy and power of this event is so potent and explosive that there is no containing it, no stopping it,  and no possibility of taming or even properly explaining it. It is powerful enough not only to blow the stone away from the grave, tear the Temple curtain into shreds, and shake the world and our lives to their foundations. This is no “little Easter”. This is, quite simply, God being God. I pray that on this day you may allow the full-throated joy of God being God blow through you Spirit and break asunder the hardened molds of your life and show you a new path. This is our Creator God making all things new. Hallelujah!

The text: Psalm 116 – NRSV

On this Holy Saturday, the penultimate step on our journey, we come to a truly beautiful song of thanksgiving. Psalm 116, on its surface, is a prayer of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from a close encounter with death. Whether from illness, injury, or an attack we do not know, and need not know since the prayer can easily apply to any of these and many other less dire but stressful situations. But on this day, and as a Christian, I cannot read this without imagining the Christ speaking the words, as one person of the Trinity giving thanks to another. Read it today, and watch the darkness of Good Friday begin to fade before the dawn of tomorrow. Read it tomorrow and bask in the thanksgiving for the restoration—no, the creation of new life. On the second day of this journey we lifted up Psalm 30, another song of thanksgiving that points to the importance of approaching any situation with gratitude first, which then changes the hue of whatever the situation was before. I pray that you can now look back over this Lenten journey, wherever it has taken you, and be thankful. With that in mind, you have an marvelous excuse to read Psalm 116 once more.

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The text: Psalm 141 – NRSV

We are nearing the end of this journey. On this day, the darkest day of the Christian year, we lift up a personal lament. Rather, I should confess that the Spirit is lifting it up, as reading it now it’s amazing how appropriate this song is for this day in ways I did know until now. For this is an evening prayer, often used in modern worship at a day’s end. The prayer here is intensely personal and self-aware: the enemy here is not armies nor even the wicked themselves, but rather the danger of the psalmist succumbing to the temptations of the wicked and their many delicacies. The psalmist goes so far as to plead for correction from righteous mentors, fully aware of how potent the temptations are. Finally, the psalmist confesses faith in God, who alone is the true guide to the true path. No wonder this psalm is often called a song of sanctification, the life-long journey and struggle to maintain true to our faith and our baptisms amidst a world full of moral headwinds. Perhaps this psalm shows us a way to personalize Good Friday. None of us will ever walk the walk Jesus did on this day; none of us will ever suffer the fate Jesus suffered on this day. But what, then, is our cross? We are called to this journey of sanctification, beset by a myriad of moral snares and temptations. But we do not journey alone. Our righteous mentors are our church and anyone else who has helped us stay on the path. Remember them this day. We journey with God, who is alongside us every step of the way. Remember God’s presence this day, and when you can be in a place, a mindset, where you sense this fully, read this psalm. Make it your own.

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The text: Psalm 108 – NRSV

Psalm 108 is a remarkable thing: the first half is a copy of portions of Psalm 57, and the second half is a copy of portions of Psalm 60. So on the surface we have here a case of the Hebrew community repurposing older content in new ways, likely in a new context. That, in and of itself, is an important insight into the dynamic and living nature of Scripture, and encourages us to use them in our own mediations as the Spirit guides. Moreover, this recombination of earlier material indicates intentionality, and prompts us to ask why the psalmist editor knitted 57 and 60 together in this way. Reading the result, one might surmise from its beginning that this is a song of praise and celebration, but in fact the psalmist is in deep distress. The first hint is in v.6, the last verse included from Psalm 57. The core of the pain comes toward the end: but you have rejected us, God, haven’t you? You, God, no longer accompany our armies. The sense of abandonment is clear. As in other examples we have discussed, if it is hard to relate to the image of an army, try substituting your own community, family, or even your individual life. For the psalmist, and perhaps for us in our darker times, God seems nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, the psalm begins with an anthem of praise! Seen in the overall context, as knitted together, this praise comes not as a response to the psalmist’s current bleak situation, but rather is a proclamation of faith in God and God’s salvation, despite all evidence to the contrary. By now, if you have journeyed this far, you will recognize this common pattern in so many laments in the psalter. This is why they always contain verses of praise: the psalmist sings a song of praise from the darkness into the face of the darkness, knowing full well that the darkness has no chance against the might of God. Could there possibly be better news? Hallelujah!

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The text: Psalm 104 – NRSV

If you are a nature lover, then there are few psalms that can compete with Psalm 104. It is an extended poem about the totality of Creation framed as a song of praise to the Creator. While there are echoes of Genesis 1 here, the level of detail is much greater. Clearly the psalmist was a keen observer of the natural world, and one cannot help but come away from reading this psalm with an appreciation of the complexity and interconnectivity of all life. It’s fascinating, and even a bit amusing, to see humans treated just like the other animals (v. 23, 26). There go the ships and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. Leviathan was the great sea monster of the deep, the sum of all fears of every ancient sailor and the symbol of the chaos of the limitless ocean. What juxtaposition! What is clearly missing here is any exalting of humanity over the rest of creation like we find Genesis or Psalm 8. We are simply another small part of the vastness of God’s created order. This leads to the core of the psalm, v. 27-30, a beautiful statement of how all life comes from God and continually depends on God. In this way, Psalm 104 is closer to John 1, where the Christ is the agent of creation: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. There is a word here for us as we journey through Holy Week. Perhaps we should remember with the psalmist that fundamentally our God is a Creator, and is still at work. After all, what is Easter if not a profound act of creation? As our Creator God says through Isaiah: Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

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The text: Psalm 58 – NRSV

Today we lift up another psalm that you will not likely find lifted up often, and almost never  during a polite worship service. Like Psalm 109, this psalm is imprecatory, a lament so passionately felt that the language to our ears may burn with anger and violence. From the beginning it wails against the work of little, worldly “gods” that bring violence and empower the wicked. The psalmist cries out to God, not so that the psalmist can enact vengeance, but so that God will act to bring justice to the earth. As I read this psalm now in this early part of Holy Week, and contemplate the events only a few days away, the words seem not shocking but highly appropriate and to the point. Can we understand the injustice and corruption that the psalmist lifts up? Absolutely. We will see it in abundance this Friday. Do we live in a similarly corrupt world? Absolutely. Watch the news, if you dare. What makes this psalm not merely angry words but something profound is that it is a statement of faith. It assumes—no, proclaims— that God’s justice is real, that God’s intended reality is this just reality, and is bold enough to insist this is true even in the darkest of hours. This psalm may not be found in a polite church service, but it is the one you want with you on Good Friday. This psalmist knows that whatever happens, in the end people will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth.” And on that darkest of days, a centurion, of all people, will say, surely this man was the Son of God!

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The text: Psalm 24 – NRSV

This is one of those little psalms that has much to say. It may be tempting to focus on its perhaps more famous second half that has been set to music many times. But to me this psalm speaks most strongly through the interplay between its two halves. On the one hand, the psalm asks who among us can ascend God’s holy hill and stand in that holy place. On the other, we see God arriving at this place through ancient gates. Is this then a convergence, a place where the human and divine meet? But this place is not the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could stand, and then but once per year. No, we are talking about a company of people, those who have clean hands and pure hearts. This is not about law following. It is about internal transformation. What does that remind you of? Is this place none other than the Kingdom of God? It’s a fascinating question given how the psalm begins: The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it. That Genesis claim sets the context for the entire conversation, pointing to a reality that God sees and desires. It may remind you of Psalm 47, another enthronement psalm that reflects the idea in Revelation of the world becoming the Kingdom. Perhaps there’s another way in. Remembering that such Hebrew literature can (and often should) be read at multiple levels, what if the gate, the ancient door, is the gate to your mind, heart, and soul? What would happen this Lent if you opened a gate in your personal defensive wall and let the King of glory come in? What would happen if you let the psalm self-reflect: read it again, now with the proclamation that you are the Lord’s and all that is in you. What transformation could this cause? It may be that the answer is right there: you will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from the God of your salvation.

The text: Psalm 66 – NRSV

Today on this Lenten journey we come to a notable milestone: Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. Whether you have been following along from the beginning or have found these posts only recently, I hope they have been of some help to you in your Lenten walk this year. On this final “little Easter” before the main event, we lift up a psalm that is a song of praise but also one of witness and thanksgiving. As we have seen in other psalms, a change in voice marks a turning point and an opening for understanding. The first half is communal, celebrating what God has done through major events like the Exodus, but such is the language that it can apply to any act where God has saved the people from disaster. The second half switches to first person singular: the individual psalmist offering a faithful response to God’s acts of communal salvation. Again, such is the language, where what God has done for the psalmist is never specified, that the psalm becomes an open invitation for us to substitute whatever it is God has done for us into the text, making the prayer our own. That God’s communal acts can result in individual faith is a powerful story, and a universal one. How else does anyone come to faith, if not through community? So on this Palm Sunday, perhaps this psalm asks us to remember and celebrate those communities in our own pasts and presents that have formed faith in us, or are forming and deepening faith, and to give thanks. It’s a pathway to owning our faith histories, our own personal stories to tell. If we keep these stories in mind on this day, just imagine what these stories might become a week from now!

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The text: Psalm 81 – NRSV

When we think of a psalm of lament, I would guess that most of us imagine the speaker to be human. That is, the voice of the psalm is that of a person crying out to God in distress, or perhaps in the case of a communal lament, that of an entire community. But in this psalm the tables are turned. Here, the speaker is God. Now, the psalm doesn’t start this way. It opens with a song of praise, likely used at a festival or other communal worship. Having called the worship to order, the shift happens in v. 6, just after the psalmist states, I hear a voice I had not known. That, perhaps, is the problem in a nutshell. For God then launches into a recounting of Israel’s faith history, beginning with the Exodus from Egypt. As we read, we would be well advised to do what Israel did not: listen. Three times God complains about their, and our, failing to listen. Listen for God’s anguish in this psalm, and allow yourself to ponder what it can possibly mean for God to experience this emotion. What does it say about God that God would cry out to us in pain? Isn’t that our role? How should we respond? To me, this brings to mind the parables of Luke 15, where God seeks out the lost coin, the lost sheep, and finally the lost son. Maybe this reminds you of Psalm 8 that celebrates a God who acts first, or the incredibly close relationship God desires with us described in Psalm 139. This is not the behavior of a God who stands aloof, but one who stands just outside the door of our hearts and minds, hoping that we will open it. When we do, when we listen, maybe we can learn to say, this is a voice that I know.

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The text: Psalm 121 – NRSV

There is a particular point on northbound highway 191 as you leave Jackson, WY where the road ascends sufficiently so that, at last, one can see clearly what lies to the west. It is a moment of pure magic, and I will never forget my kids’ reactions when it happened almost 10 years ago now on our first trip to the most wondrous place of my childhood, Yellowstone. Seeing the Tetons for the first time, especially on a clear day, even more if you have only seen mountains that barely equal their foothills, can be a life-changing and intensely spiritual event. Being in the presence of raw majesty can, if we let it, profoundly correct our perspective. I cannot read this little jewel of a psalm without remembering such experiences. To me there is no psalm more beautiful than Psalm 121, no psalm more eloquent in its concise construction, no psalm more evocative of God’s nature. My advice is simple: memorize it. Take it with you. For the psalm is one of pilgrimage, encompassing the entire journey of a life of faith. What will you find when you look to the hills? It may be peace, it may be faith, or like Julie Andrew’s Maria, it may even be music. There is something about a mountain…

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