The Psalms: Our Poetic Heritage

July 9, 1989

Download Sermon

Scripture: Psalm 23

Like short wave radios and highways, sermons need to be 2-way things. That’s always the case. You can no more have preaching without hearers, then you can have medicine without patients, or law without clients, or pitchers without catchers. The one, in the very nature of the case, implies the other. No message, whether eloquent or not, can possibly be effective until it has been received, and the congregation, I’m convinced, is at least as important in determining the quality of a sermon as the preacher.

The more you bring to the sermon event, the more you get out of it....the more it means.... So I’d like to do something this morning to discourage you from being a mere spectator. I’d like to try to involve you in a practical way.

You’ll notice we haven’t had any Scripture Lesson so far in the order of worship. We’re at that point, but we haven’t heard it yet. I want you to recite the Scripture Lesson with me, if you will. You can do it by heart, I bet, most of you. Let’s try it. If you absolutely have to cheat, there is a cheat sheet in the bulletin. Look at it if you need to. Let’s say together in unison the 23rd Psalm.

There! Well done. I’m proud of you. “The Lord is my shepherd......” Isn’t that a magnificent poem, an inspired assemblage of words.... I suppose that with the possible exception of the Lord’s Prayer and maybe John 3:16, no other passage of Scripture in the whole Bible has given more comfort, and hope, and promise to people across the centuries than this one.

There’s something so uncontrived about it, so honest, and yet so deeply and fervently faith-filled...” The Lord is my shepherd....”

What a pity we don’t know more of the Psalms by heart. We ought to. It really ought to be a part of the Confirmation requirement, or something. I have an idea it would add stature to the meaning of Church membership.

I used to have a professor in Seminary named Boone Bowen. George had him, too. He’s no longer living, I’m sorry to say. His field was the Old Testament, and his mind was absolutely saturated with the great passages of Hebrew literature.

He was a Charlestonian, by both birth and choice, I think, a native of the Sovereign State of South Carolina, and he had a deep, mellifluous Southern accent. It was beautiful, as all Southern accents are, but his was especially rich. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a Southern Hebrew drawl, or would it be a Hebrew Southern drawl...I’m not sure, but you get the picture.

He was forever trying to get some of us to take Hebrew so we could read the Old Testament in the original. “My young brethren”[1], he would say, as only Boone Bowen could say it, “my young brethren, when you get to Heaven, how are you going to get along, how are you going to converse unless you speak the language of Heaven?”

Well, Dr. Bowen could quote the Bible all day long, in both Hebrew and Southern, without repeating himself. He had committed great portions of it to memory, and once, I remember, he said, “Boys”.....(sometimes he called us young brethren, sometimes he called us boys---- it depended on the preceding test....)

“Boys, let me give you a tip. If you want to do something beneficial in your ministry, both for yourself and for your people, take some of the great Psalms and learn them by heart. Memorize them, saturate yourself in them, learn them so well that you can say them in your sleep. Not only will you be blessed, but there will be times in your ministry, maybe in a hospital or nursing home, when simply by quoting a familiar Psalm or a few words from one of these devotional classics, you’ll be able to say more than you could ever say in your own words.”

Well, if that’s true for the preacher, why isn’t it true for lay persons, too? Isn’t that what the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers means? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. (That’s the meaning of the Priesthood of All Believers in a nutshell....Just a little theological aside I throw in at no extra cost.)

IF IT WOULD BE A BENEFIT TO PREACHERS TO MEMORIZE SOME PSALMS, WHY WOULDN’T IT BE OF BENEFIT TO EVERYBODY?

Why wouldn’t it help us all to have our minds and hearts drenched with these passages? The answer is that it wouldn’t hurt us one iota.

So here’s my proposal...or proposition, as the case may be. I hope you’ll receive it with a gladsome spirit. For the next few Sundays, I’m going to try to preach on the Psalms, and not just on individual Psalms, so much, but on the thinking, the attitudes, the beliefs and commitments that lie behind this great Hebrew poetry. I think this can be a meaningful experience.

Next Sunday I want to talk about The Psalms and Humanity....HUMANKIND, in the generic sense, which includes us all.

What did these profound writers----and there were lots of them, scholars tell us, not just David....What did they think about humankind?

What did they think about humankind’s character about humankind’s nature, about humankind’s destiny? That’s a pertinent question, isn’t it?

Is the human race basically good, or basically evil? Are people essentially undeveloped saints, or programmed sinners?

Well, we’ll look into it next week, same time, same station, and for your preparation...it’s almost like school, isn’t it?...that’s all right...for your preparation, I want you to memorize the 8th Psalm. There’s a copy of it in your bulletin, King James version.

Take it home with you and put it on your bathroom mirror, or on your refrigerator, or somewhere so you can see it each time you pass by. Learn it by heart. Don’t tell me you can’t, because you’re smart people...of course you can. It’s just 9 little verses long, and that’s not too much. It begins, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.”

Before it ends, it has some interesting and probing things to say about HUMANITY. Now don’t forget what your assignment is. I don’t want anybody to flunk. We’re going to recite the 8th Psalm together next Sunday morning.

THIS morning, though, to get us into the subject a little bit, some quick background.

What are the Psalms? Why are they in the Bible? What is their place, what is their role...AND WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE LIFE OF 
A CHRISTIAN?

First, I guess, I should remind you of something you already know. Scripture contains a variety of types of writing. You knew that. The Bible, as you learned back in the Cradle Roll Department, or wherever your theological education began to take shape...the Bible is more than a book...It’s a library, a whole collection of books.

Certain portions of the Old Testament represent what might be called the words of God to humankind.... We think of the 10 Commandments, and the great prophetic writings---God speaking through people, like Amos and Isaiah, His words to the race.

Other portions of the Old Testament might be described as the words of HUMAN to HUMAN, on the subject of God.

For example, much of the historical writings, and most of the Wisdom literature...the words of human to human ABOUT God....This is a different kind of writing.

BUT THE PSALMS ARE DIFFERENT STILL. They are unique in that unlike other Biblical material, they are primarily the words of a person addressed TO God...typically in poetical form. This is a different kind of writing entirely.

Almost certainly the Psalms were written over a rather long stretch of time.... Some as old as David himself....1000 B.C., or thereabouts.

The latest ones weren’t written until after the Exile...maybe 400 or 300 B.C.

They were collected, these poems, over the years, and put together after the Exile, to make up the hymnbook of the 2nd Temple. You remember your Bible history, that was after Cyrus the Persian had rescued them from the Babylonians and allowed them to go home.

The Psalms essentially were the songs that were sung by the worshiping community, a kind of ancient Semitic United Methodist Hymnal, if you please, of the post-exilic era.

We don’t have the music, but we have the words, the words of people addressed to God, words of praise, words of despair, words of frustration....and almost every other mood that people go through.

The Psalms contain some of the most human writing to be found in the Old Testament. They contain some of the most personal longings to be found in the whole Bible.

They contain, through and through, examples of humankind’s unrelenting search for the certainty of God’s presence....They are eternal, timeless religious poems, which give us an accurate glimpse into the spiritual life, not only of the ancient Hebrews, but of humankind.

AND THEY REPRESENT SOMETHING YOU CAN HOLD ON TO, SOMETHING YOU CAN CLING TO WHEN THERE’S NOT MUCH ELSE AROUND THAT IS STEADY.

Don’t we need an infusion of that in our world right now? I know it’s a cliché to say we’re living in a time of change, but it’s true. We all know it’s true. We see it in the erosion of standards, for instance. If it weren’t so serious, it might almost be comical.

I read awhile back about the principal of a high school. He was fed up with the constant, year-after-year lowering of test scores. They were going down and down. So he called the student body together in an assembly, and said, “Do you know what’s wrong with you kids? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. 80% of you can’t spell. And the other 30% can’t add.”

Well....it’s pervasive. But even that is just a symptom of a larger insubstantialness.

With all the calls, the blandishments, the allures that come to us from so many directions at once, the pressures and appeals that would push us this way or that, it’s hard to know what is solid and certain.

Someone told me recently about a huge crate that was received out at the Airport. It came in on a flight somewhere. Nobody was sure exactly what was in it, but on the side of the crate was printed this cryptic message: THIS BOX IS ABSOLUTELY TO BE SHIPPED BOTTOM SIDE UP. Then beneath that it said, “Bottom has been labeled top in order to avoid confusion.”

It’s almost a commentary on modern life. I’ve had whole weeks like that, haven’t you, when it was hard to tell just which end was up.

There are so many questions we wish we could answer.... BIG questions, we really don’t have solutions for....

Where is our country heading, for example.... What lies ahead for us as we move closer to a new century?

What’s happening to the fabric of our society?

What about the people who live out on the fringes?

What about personal integrity?

What about respect for the other people? Why the eroding of plain, common decency?

Do you ever get a feeling that we’ve somehow lost our bearings?

Could it be that we’ve forgotten who we are...and what it means to be the people of God?

Old Dr. Baillie, Dr. Donald Baillie, the great Scottish Presbyterian preacher, used to talk about what he called the analogy of the FIRE DANCERS.

God has called his human children, he said, to form a great circle around a fire. This is the human situation. In that circle all of us ought to be standing, hand in hand with our neighbors, facing the light and warmth of the fire in the center, which, of course, is God.

And then, with the light in our faces and the warmth of the fire permeating our bodies, we ought to join hands together in the dance of life, the dance of universal celebration.

But look, says Dr. Baillie, this is not, in fact, what we find. Instead, we have all turned our backs to God and the circle. We’ve faced the other way, so that we can see 
neither the light at the center, nor the faces on the circumference. IN fact, in that position, it’s almost impossible even to join hands with each other at all.

So, in the darkness we lose the rhythm of the dance....We get out of step, we stumble over our feet, we stumble over our neighbors’ feet, we jump at our shadows and wonder who will turn us around to face again the light and warmth of God’s love.

It’s true enough, isn’t it, to make us squirm. Well, if that analogy speaks to your condition, then the Psalms will speak to your condition, because that’s their message, too.

I don’t care if they are 2500 years old, they’re incredibly up-to-date. THIS BASIC PERENNIAL PROBLEM OF HUMANKIND’S ESTRANGEMENT FROM GOD, and from one’s self, and from one’s neighbor is precisely what they’re all about.

You might almost say that if the Bible were a newspaper, the Psalms would be the Want-Ads...especially the Help Wanted section.

One of the most interesting things you can do is go though the Book of Psalms, there in the center of the Bible, and underline all the questions. I recommend it as a fruitful exercise. It’s not an assignment---you have enough homework---but for extra credit, if you like, go through the Book of Psalms and underline all the questions. You’ll never again be able to think of the Bible as antiquated......

Listen to some of them: questions about doubt and dejection....Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why does God stand afar off and hide? Have you ever felt like that?

There are questions of ethics and morality....Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? How shall a young man keep his way pure? How modern and pertinent can you get?

There are questions of life and death....Will the dust praise thee? Dost thou work wonders for the dead? And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? From whence cometh my help?

Aren’t those questions all of us want answers to? Maybe the Old Testament is anticipatory. I’ll accept that. Maybe it does have only a dim foreshadowing of the answers Christ supplies in fuller detail.... AT LEAST IT ASKS THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

At least it’s moving unmistakably in the right direction...and how can we help but feel a sense of kinship with these great souls of the past who covered so thoroughly the same ground over which we now are traveling.

John Calvin was a great student of the Psalms. Somewhere in his writings...in the Institutes, he says this: “The varied and resplendent riches which are contained in this treasure it is no easy matter to express in words.... I have been accustomed to call this book,  I think not inappropriately, An Anatomy of All Parts of the Soul, for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”

Now, there’s more here than we can possibly touch on this morning, but let me say one more thing about the Psalms in this introductory sermon. I make it personal because that’s how it’s most real to me. I am convinced that the Psalms are among the most valuable resources we have in the performance of our Christian ministry. Dr. Bowen was right.

I’m talking now to people who understand. I know I am. The fact that we’re living in a materially prosperous age can’t obscure for long the truth that the deepest issues of life are spiritual.

You can’t get away from it......Wonder drugs, miracle surgery, all the remarkable breakthroughs of medicine---wonderful as they are----none of it gets to the heart of the fundamental problems of human existence.

As a character in a modern novel says to her wayward, unrepentant husband: “Does the name God ring a bell with you?”

Yeah, What about God? What about ME and my relationship with Him? In lives all around us, and maybe in our own, we see heartache, and sadness, and sometimes deep-seated malaise.

I’m not telling you something new. You can’t scratch the surface of a single family without finding it. As someone has said, “Anybody who goes around today looking for trouble just isn’t paying attention.”

It’s everywhere, all around us, and the Church, maybe as never before, has a continuing, unending ministry to the sick and the lonely, and the hurting, and the bereaved.... It has a priestly ministry that it can not evade. It’s why we’re here.

Now it’s not always pleasant, that ministry. It’s not always easy, it’s not always exciting, it’s not always fun, but then maybe fun, as a virtue, is overrated anyway.

EVEN WHEN IT’S NOT FUN, IT’S PART OF OUR CALLING AS A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY TO BE ABOUT THIS KIND OF BUSINESS. It’s what it means to be a follower of the thorn-crowned Man.

And if that’s true, then how important it is for us to be able to minister in the most effective way possible. This is where the Psalms come in.

I know, even out of my own limited experience, that when we come to people, when we try to respond in all our inadequacy to those who call us, how much more helpful we are when we come with the credentials of the ages, rather than with some puny, clever phraseology of our own invention.

I suppose the most difficult job a preacher is called upon to perform has to do with the ministry to bereaved persons...the shock of death and its aftermath, the funeral, the ministry of grief...all of it together.

No person with even an ounce of sensitivity can be completely a professional in those moments...that probably would be the worst blasphemy a preacher could perform.

But how do you handle it? What do you say? What is there to say, to a sorrowing family, a family torn apart, that will bring some measure of comfort and sustenance, and at the same time will be honest in that awful hour?

How thankful I am as a Christian minister for the resources of the Psalms, and, of course, for other great passages of Scripture as well.

How could I ever improve on “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations...even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” Or, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Or, “From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Or “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

I could study for a long time and write books of sermons, and never improve on that. Could you?

There’s something very precious, very priceless, and very enduring about these ancient Hebrew poems. In their honesty, and simplicity, and genuineness there’s a value that moth and rust simply cannot corrupt, and that even the passage of the rolling centuries cannot dilute.

They are a timeless, incomparable legacy that should be etched into the consciousness of the Christian community. WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT WOULD MAKE IF WE’D LET THEM MOLD US WITH THEIR LYRICAL PROFUNDITY.

I hope I’ve convinced you. You’ll bless yourself as you commit some of them to memory this month. May I urge you to take the time to do it? It’ll require some effort. Of course it will. BUT IT WILL BE WORTH IT.

FOR MAYBE as we come to live with these master poets, and thinkers, and human beings of an earlier day, we’ll come to catch some of their authenticity, and sincerity, and humility, and zeal....and maybe, too, we’ll grow into a closer relationship with the God in whom they so passionately believed, the One they likened to a Shepherd, the One whose goodness and mercy, they believed, would follow them all their lives, until, at last, they came to dwell in His house...FOREVER.

--

[1] When Tom was at Candler School of Theology all of the students were male.