May 6th

Psalm 145

Soaked through with grace

⁸God is all mercy and grace—
    not quick to anger, is rich in love.

⁹ God is good to one and all;
    everything he does is soaked through with grace.

^10-11 Creation and creatures applaud you, God;
    your holy people bless you.

They talk about the glories of your rule,
    they exclaim over your splendor,

¹² Letting the world know of your power for good,
    the lavish splendor of your kingdom.

When our grandchildren, here for a sleepover, wake up, they are greeted with a hug and an ‘I love you’ as we sit down for breakfast.  Sometimes its porridge, sometimes cheerios, and very occasionally waffles!  This is how they learn to trust us, not because we tell them we are trustworthy; rather we show them by repeated acts of generosity and love.

Who is YHWH – the covenant God?  Verses 8-9 show us.  This is Israel’s oldest theological confession (see Exodus 34.6-7).  These verses express YHWH’s free, passionate, and limitless self-giving to the covenant partner, in this case the whole created world. 

The terms used here by our psalmist are personal-relational, not the lofty attributes of academic theology we are so familiar with: God the omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present One.  (These attributes are true of God but they are not relational terms).  The creation holds together because of YHWH’s faithfulness. 

How are these conclusions reached?  The psalmist records the experiences of daily reality, evidence from the simple facts of regular provision of  crops, food, security, and other necessities.  Similar to those daily actions we practice with our grandkids.  

I like the fact that in some Lectionaries, this Psalm is paired with the story of Jonah.  Our psalmist celebrates God's gracious character while Jonah, God's own prophet, resents it.  Reading the two stories together compels us to reflect on our own attitudes toward God.  Do we crave God’s gracious actions on our behalf while resenting God’s goodness to others who may be quite unlike us? 

The word all/every occurs seventeen times in this psalm!  This indicates YHWH’s comprehensive sovereignty and gracious care for the entire cosmos.   

We are in the season of Easter.  We remember that on the night before he died, Jesus shared a last meal with his closest friends.  He embraced his human community fully aware of the tragic contradictions in it (the disciples’ arguments about who would be greatest; Judas’ plot to betray him), and he did so through the symbols of bread broken and wine poured. The one who embraces the contradiction is broken, will be broken on a Roman cross. 

But . . . in the resurrection stories that follow Jesus again is known in the breaking of bread, offering fresh, new life to weary and frightened disciples.  The God of the Psalmist is the God of Jesus, who reminds us that, "I have made you a light to the nations, so that my salvation may reach the remotest parts of the earth" (Acts 13:47).  All this God does is ‘soaked through with grace!’  HALLELUJAH!