May 20th

Psalm 147

Singing the World Open

In 1985, Ronald Reagan went to Geneva, Switzerland, for his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to discuss nuclear disarmament. While in Geneva, the Reagan’s borrowed the chateau of a Muslim friend. The homeowner’s son, Hussain, left a note for the President asking him to please feed his goldfish, which Mr. Reagan was happy to do.

On the first morning of the summit with Gorbachev, disaster struck. A goldfish was dead at the bottom of the tank. The First Lady later said the President was so upset that he called his entire staff into the boy’s bedroom to figure out a solution. In the end, the summit with the Soviet leader was a huge success marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War. And before leaving Geneva, President Reagan personally wrote the following note to the homeowner’s son:

Dear Friend,
On Tuesday I found one of your fish dead in the bottom of the tank. I don’t know what could have happened but I added two new ones, same kind, I hope this was alright. Thanks for letting us live in your lovely home.
Ronald Reagan
The President of the United States

It’s a charming story, but what I find most remarkable is the contrast between the two challenges the President was facing. On the one hand, he was responsible for managing the fate of humanity by de-escalating the threat of a nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, he was concerned about one boy’s dead goldfish.   [1]

A similar but far larger contrast is seen in Psalm 147. YHWH is described as having limitless cosmic power. He commands the earth and the heavens, supplies rain and manages the seasons, and governs the stars above and the nations below. Verse 5 captures this vision of God when it declares, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limits.”

Note well how this psalm begins and ends:  Praise the Lord!  In fact this psalm is the first of the five concluding psalms (146-150) and all of them begin and end with the Hebrew exclamation - HALLELUJAH! (in English it is often translated as ‘Praise the Lord’). These psalms are a ‘cataract of praise’  (Charles Spurgeon), an exhortation to live a praiseworthy life.  Our sung praise and our lived praise are unseparable. 

OT theologian Walter Brueggemann commenting on these poem-songs takes ‘Sing praises’ as key:

       Israel holds doxology against the powerful … forces of the rulers of this age.  Israel sings, and we never know what holy power is unleashed by such singing.  One reason we may not sing is that such hope is intellectually outrageous….But the church and Israel do sing!  This singing is our vocation, our duty, and our delight.  We sing this staggering Name – and the world becomes open again, especially for those on whom it had closed in such deathly ways-the prisoners, the blind, the immigrant, the widow, the orphan.  The world is sung open.’  [2]

Psalm 147 highlights two major themes: creation and the deliverance/salvation God brings to God’s people.

Each of the three sections of this psalm begins with an exhortation of praise:

 Praise the Lord!
    Because it is good to sing praise to our God!
    Because it is a pleasure to make beautiful praise!  (v. 1)   

Why we do we offer such lavish praise?  Not to manipulate God into doing something we want.  Not because God needs it.  But because ‘it is a pleasure to make beautiful praise!’

⁷ Sing to the Lord with thanks;
    sing praises to our God with a lyre!   (v. 7)    

¹² Worship the Lord, Jerusalem!
    Praise your God, Zion!  (v. 12)

This God has other priorities than many of our power-brokers do (v. 2-3,10).  While empires are impressed with weapons and soldiers (see recent military parade in Moscow), God is unimpressed.  Israel’s God counts bandages for wounds, not horses, tanks, or missiles!  God even cares about the baby ravens (v. 9) and maybe  a dead goldfish?  (see also Jesus’ words in Luke 12.24).

²⁴ Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

What is especially beautiful about this psalm for me are  verses 15-19.

¹⁵ God issues his command to the earth—
    God’s word speeds off fast!
¹⁶ God spreads snow like it was wool;
    God scatters frost like it was ashes;
¹⁷ God throws his hail down like crumbs—
    who can endure God’s freezing cold?
¹⁸ Then God issues his word and melts it all away!
    God makes his winds blow;
    the water flows again.

¹⁹ God proclaims his word to Jacob;
    his statutes and rules to Israel.
We can’t number the stars (v. 5), some of which we can see but God sees them all and even gives them names.  The early church father, Cyprian, pointed out that a person can’t even number the raindrops that fall on our roof in an hour.  How much less can we number stars or calculate wisdom? 

Here we see the inseparability of creation and redemption, that is, God’s dealing with a particular people – Israel (and the church) – is for the fulfillment of God’s purposes for all creation.  The Bible makes this very clear: the sweep of the Biblical story begins with Genesis rather than with Exodus and ends with the glorious picture in Revelation 21-22 where we have a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ and the ‘healing of the nations.’  [3]

At the heart of our biblical faith is the astounding claim that the power that names all the stars (v.4) is the same power who heals the brokenhearted, lifts up the downtrodden, and gives the life-giving word-Torah to Israel.  The cosmic God is someone we know!

Notes

[1]  Story by Skye Jethani online at ‘With God daily.’

[2]  For Psalm 146 see Blog on November 3, 2024.

[3]  J. Clinton McCann.