June 17thPsalm 150
‘The praise of God, the eternal Creator, is finished and completed.’ *
‘No other use of breath could be more right and true to life than praise of the Lord. No other sound could better speak the gratitude of life than praise of the Lord.’ [James Mays]
When she turned 30 (in 1373) Julian of Norwich entered a little cell attached to the church at Norwich. During a serious illness she had received a revelation of God’s love that she would spend the rest of her life meditating on. The cell had only two small windows: one looking into the church, and the other to the outside world. There she prayed, offered spiritual counsel to those who came to visit, and wrote. Julian’s A Revelation of Love (the first book in English written by a woman) offers a theology of love and delight.
At one point she writes, “Our soul must perform two duties.” “The one,” she writes, “is we must reverently wonder and be surprised. The other is we must gently let go and let be, always delighting in God.”
Wonder, surprise, to gently let go? Such are duties of the soul? I believe our psalmist would have understood.
Psalm 1, the beginning, emphasizes ‘obedience’ while Psalm 150 encourages unreserved praise. There is, however, much more than the options of ‘obedience’ and ‘praise.’ There are after all 148 psalms between Psalm 1 and 150. Those psalms are about torah and obedience and praise, but also about pain and lament, loss and suffering, candor and hope – as well as how all these are mixed up and mixed together in our life with God. And yet, as Eugene Peterson notes, ‘all prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise. Any prayer, no matter how desperate its origin, no matter how angry and fearful the experiences it traverses, ends up in praise. It does not always get their quickly or easily – the trip can take a lifetime – but the end is always praise.’ [1]
In 1965 the great Duke Ellington was invited to compose a musical piece for the grand opening of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The climactic ending of the music was ‘Praise God and Dance’ based on Psalm 150.
https://youtu.be/DqkegICSnf0 - Praise God and Dance (Duke Ellington)
* The rabbis footnote for this psalm is ‘The praise of God, the eternal Creator, is finished and completed.’ Even a casual reading notes that each half verse from vs.1-5 begins with a form of the Hebrew verb ‘praise.’
[1] Eugene Peterson – Answering God, 122.
A PERSONAL NOTE
And so I have come, after some three and half years, to the end of my blogging the Psalms. I have read the Psalms daily for many years; they have shaped my prayers, and much of my theology. My goal was to pass on to you, my friends at MRMC, my enthusiasm for these songs/prayers, and my hope is that some of you will take up the joyful discipline of reading the Psalms regularly as part of your spiritual practice. Even reading one psalm a day will take you through the Psalter twice a year. Over time some of the words and images will become a part of your life in important ways.
I have a number of favorite Psalms * but at different times in my life certain psalms have been very meaningful to me. When my mother was dying, Psalm 23 was comforting to both her and me. When I was beginning ministry, some of the wisdom psalms (1,37,91, and 112 are examples) were very helpful. In the last year Psalm 73 has been meaningful. It reflects the struggle of faith: the psalmist agrees with others who say God is upright but he senses a tension: those who practice wickedness seem to flourish while the pure in heart are frequently in trouble, but it closes with strong words of confidence in God’s presence, guidance, and protection (see vs. 21-28). This prayer could have been written last week!
Charles Spurgeon the great English preacher, loved the Psalms! He preached over 400 sermons on this collection of writings during his pastoral ministry. He also invested twenty years in authoring a seven-volume exposition entitled The Treasury of David. With the first volume published at the age of thirty-one and the last one published seven years before his death at the age of fifty-five, his work on the Psalter covered many of his pastoral years at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. It is an outstanding accomplishment. His “magnum opus” is even more impressive, knowing that he wrote much of it while suffering the debilitating pain of gout and other related physical illnesses. When we consider he employed a team of nearly a dozen people to research and translate books into English, his Treasury is remarkable.
The Psalms undoubtedly enriched Spurgeon’s own life. As he neared the completion of the Treasury of David, he wrote, “The Book of Psalms has been a royal banquet to me, and in feasting upon its contents I have seemed to eat angels’ food.” In light of his physical suffering, the overwhelming pressures on his pastoral ministry, and the pain of friends rejecting him, the Psalms strengthened his faith in Jesus Christ.
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/blog-entries/the-significances-of-the-psalms-for-spurgeon/
I echo Spurgeon’s sentiments: The “writing of this book (these blogs) has been a means of grace to my own heart; I have enjoyed for myself what I have prepared for my readers.”
Thank you to MRMC for hosting this site, and thank you to all who have read along, sometimes commented, and often encouraged me.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Garth