August 13thPsalm 118
This is the Day
The psalm is bursting with exuberance and joy, the language barely adequate to the task of conveying the wonder of what God has done. For the psalmist was as good as dead and now is alive. The psalmist speaks of nations that had surrounded him, pressing in on him like bees ready to attack or like a fire of thorns that encircles and traps its victim, leaving no escape (v. 11-12). “I give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 118:1). This is a psalm that deserves to be sung before it is read! [see the link below]
The psalm begins (v.1-4) with an invitation to recite Israel’s creed that God’s unshakeable covenant love continues into eternity:
First, Israel as a people confess the creed.
Next the priesthood confesses.
Finally, new converts and proselytes confess.
Each verse uses ‘steadfast love’ (hesed) a Hebrew word that describes the very essence of God’s faithful character.
But our psalmist finds himself in a tight spot: “In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord.” (v.4). Then, at the crucial moment, God intervenes to offer salvation (vs. 14,16):
“The Lord’s right hand is victorious!
The Lord’s right hand is ready to strike!
The Lord’s right hand is victorious!”
The entire psalm hinges on this characteristic activity of God of hearing and answering the cries of his people, turning mourning into dancing, and the night into day. This is Israel’s most foundational experience of God.
Rolf Jacobson notes in his article, “The Costly Loss of Praise,” praise is not simply an act of piety, but a polemical and political assertion. [1] Praise evokes a worldview, one in which God is an active agent in daily life. In other words, praise declares, in the face of alternative conceptions of reality, that the source of Israel’s salvation and the hope for the world is God and God alone.
8 It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust any human.
9 It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust any human leader.
Orthodox Christians recite this psalm during the Paschal liturgy on Holy Saturday Eve. A priest will stand outside the door of the church and demand entry. As he knocks, we can hear Christ himself battering down the gates of hell, and lifting out Adam and Eve. There is no refuge from Christ’s grace if he will storm the very gates of the netherworld to save.
Helmut Thielicke tells an intriguing, personal story. As a young pastor in Nazi Germany, he was determined to appropriate Jesus’s statement, ‘All power is given me in heaven and earth.’ In Germany, in the 1930s, Adolph Hitler held sway, but the young pastor repeated in his heart and mind Christ’s audacious words.
At his first Bible study, however, he found himself facing two old ladies and a still older organist with palsied fingers. Was this what the Lord with all power in heaven and earth was about? Outside the church battalions of youth marched to the beat of a totally different lord.
That evening, back in his rooms, he wondered if God’s promise was true. Didn’t this ‘utterly miserable’ response refute Jesus’ declaration?
Thielicke compares his feelings that evening to those of the disciples when Jesus announced his coming kingdom. They knew the Romans still ruled them and the world.
But then Thielicke remembered the parable of the mustard seed. ‘The word of God, which has fallen like seed into our hearts, contains within it a tremendous, explosive power; it wants to get out, it yearns to bear fruit.’ [2]
In the context of Easter, praise is particularly crucial. For ours is a world which increasingly looks for salvation from evil in the building of walls, the carrying of weapons, and the hoarding of resources. It is ours, then, as the people of God to posit an alternative way forward rooted in the hope we have in Jesus Christ, to assert that we live in a world where a resurrection really did happen. That God really is on the move, redeeming and restoring the world to himself in Jesus Christ. That Christ really did inaugurate a kingdom that has taken root in our hearts and that compels us to new ways of being and behaving characterized by justice, righteousness, and shalom. Ours is the task of directing people’s attention once again to the God who loves us, whose steadfast love endures forever, who is at work in our lives and in our world making all things new, who alone is our hope and our salvation. So today, we join the psalmist in praise and declare, “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever (v. 29).”
[1] Rolf Jacobson, “The Costly Loss of Praise,” Theology Today, Oct 2000:375-385.
[2] Helmut Thielicke – Notes from a Wayfarer.
https://youtu.be/v1P7DCK6n-c?si=VM_FlQJSipHPzLdr
NOTE: I will be taking a short break, the blog will return on September 10, 2024. The next Psalm (119) is the longest in the Psalter, 176 verses! It is a celebration of the Torah, the law (read – instruction) of God. I invite you to read and ponder it remembering the words of Jesus in Matthew 5.17 . . . Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.’