The text: Psalm 8 – NRSV
This is one of those psalms that can really leave you standing agape if you let it. It is very much as it appears: a lyrical and sweeping hymn of praise to our creator God. But it also addresses one of the most profound and central questions of faith. In my life I’ve known several agnostics and have counted them as good friends. In my experience a common objection to Christianity and other religions goes something like this: if there is a being so vast as to create the universe, how can we possibly claim with a straight face that this being cares about, much less loves every human that has ever lived? Nonsense! Or, how is it possible that we can know or understand anything about such a being? Considering that not that long ago we were convinced that the earth is flat and that the earth lies at the center of the universe, our track record at understanding our world is not that great. Even today we discover new species on our little planet all the time. We understand so little about our world, to say nothing of the (very much wider) universe. To be honest, as we have discussed, we have a great deal of trouble understanding ourselves. So how can we expect to understand a being like God? It seems ridiculous and impossible. But setting our ineptitudes aside for a moment, even if you allow that a being like God exists (and more than a few agnostics I have met do allow this), then by necessity this being would be completely inaccessible to us. Such a being must exist beyond space, beyond time, beyond the universe. Completely inaccessible. Up to this point in the argument, I totally agree. Without doubt God is a being so different from us that we cannot expect to understand any part of God’s nature. In fact, God seems to make this very point speaking through Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
So how then can we possibly know anything about this God? This is indeed the very question Psalm 8 is asking.
The answer is simple: God contacted us. The pivot is in v. 5: Yet you have made them…yet you have given them… We had nothing to do with it. At the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia people began preserving stories of these contacts, initially nucleating around the family of Abram, and people have been collecting these stories ever since.
This is the amazing proclamation of faith: as in creation, God always acts first. So this Lent, perhaps this psalm calls us to draw closer to a God who is utterly non-human, beyond anything we can conceive, and yet chooses to draw so close to us. This is, of course, God’s grace. No wonder this is such a psalm of exuberant praise!
O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Curious about this series of posts? Read the initial post.
Want to catch up on any you missed? See them all by clicking on ‘Lenten Psalms” below.
