being echoed in our own experience.
We have the impression that this psalm was written by a person (perhaps, indeed, King David himself) who is looking back reflectively on an eventful life. Verse 7 certainly places the person in mature age; one would hardly speak of the “sins of my youth” if he had barely emerged from the first flush of adolescence! It is a psalm that reflects on God’s trustworthiness, steadfastness, and faithfulness over considerable time. On a human level, I suppose we can think of the way a marriage develops. The love between two people changes, deepens, and develops as they face, and overcome, the challenges of life together. The psalmist has been through a great deal, we feel, and now experience teaches him that God can always be trusted. When he says “All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, / for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies” (verse 10), we feel this is not merely a pious hope but a spiritual statement of fact based on hard-won experience.
The psalm starts with a movement of repentance and recollection. What is this “lifting up of the soul” but the way in prayer we offer up to God the person we are, with all our struggles and problems? In many ways if all we do in prayer is to hold steadily and honestly before God the person we are, then we have done enough. The sick person shows his or her place of sickness and asks for healing. This, of course, takes a great deal of spiritual self-awareness and humility. The psalmist mentions this tremendously important spiritual virtue: “He leads the humble in what is right, / and teaches the humble his way” (verse 9).
There is obviously great advantage in humility if it means that we get the personal attention of God. However, in our modern times, humility has received a rather bad press, and I suppose it stands to reason in cultures that seem self-obsessed and made dizzy by the desire for image and reputation. It worries me considerably that we appear to have created a culture where, through one media or another, people can live out almost a complete fantasy life. They pick up and set down lifestyle choices genuinely believing that they can become whatever they have chosen. Do they ever stop to ask who they truly are? Are they afraid that they, when revealed to the cold light of day, might be unattractive, dull, or friendless? Do they not know that God has created them with love? Sometimes I detect in people a real panic that when all the acting stops, there will be no one left to take the bows. Everything about the Christian faith encourages a right sense of humility, because humility is essentially self-knowledge. We do not imagine we are anyone else; we do not dance with empty shadows. We know our sins and our blessings, and we “lift up our soul” every day to Christ because we believe that he has the biggest share in helping us become the people we were created to be. May his name be praised.
For Reflection
How do you lift up your soul to God?
Prayer
Almighty God, bless you for being you. Help me become truly myself. Grant me humility and wisdom. Amen.
Psalm 22
Apart from the psalm that follows, “The LORD is my shepherd,” this week’s psalm must be one of the most well known, and most debated, psalms in the Psalter. Not just because of its content, but because of when it was used, by whom, and what succeeding generations of people, both believing and unbelieving, have made of it. The first line of the psalm was, of course, spoken by Christ himself from the cross (Matthew 27:46). The debate circles around why he spoke these words and what he meant for those who heard him to understand by them.
Rather unhelpfully, the incident has been referred to quite often as “the cry of dereliction”; that is, of abandonment. This seems to me to slant our understanding immediately in a particular direction. My feeling is that those who describe Christ’s use of the psalm in this way would like to argue that at this moment, hanging on the cross, Jesus realized that he was, after all, merely human and that his whole life and ministry had ended in a cruel defeat. However, if this were the case, there would have been many other things he could have said. In fact, if one can dare to trespass on such things, Jesus’ state of mind seems to have been remarkably composed and peaceful. The Gospel of John records how, even in the midst of the terrible physical suffering of the cross, Jesus could look down on his mother and the beloved disciple and think of their well-being (John 19:25-27). No, something quite else is going on here, and the answer may well lie in how the Psalms were used.
It is unthinkable that those who heard Jesus would have missed the reference or not recognized the psalm. They would not have had to run home to check on the rest of the text before they understood. They would, after all, have heard the Psalms sung in the Temple and the synagogues weekly, if not daily. Jesus acted, as it were, as a cantor, speaking the first line after which the whole rest of the psalm would rise into the hearer’s minds. Christ spoke this first line to reveal that the psalm is a prophecy and that it was being fulfilled in their presence.
With this in mind, we can see to our growing astonishment the way many details of the psalm, written centuries before the time of Christ, accord exactly with the circumstances of the Crucifixion. Jesus was surrounded by his mocking enemies (verses 12-13), the physical effects of crucifixion (verse 14), and, of course, the casting of lots for the clothing (verse 18).
What is just as compelling is the reference “backward” in the prophetic literature to the suffering servant imagery of Isaiah. If you compare the imagery of verse 6 (“I am a worm, and no man; / scorned by men, and despised by the people”) with Isaiah 53:1-3, the full power of the prophecy-being-fulfilled becomes apparent. Jesus, throughout his active ministry, taught in many different ways. Sometimes he taught directly; at other times he performed what one might call an “acted parable,” like that of looking for fruit on the fig tree in the wrong season (Mark 11:12-14). In this case, Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem as Messiah, foreshadows the kind of welcome he is likely to receive. In fact, as the Word of God, everything he did or said had a life-giving and revelatory purpose. In the case of Psalm 22, the opening words point the hearers, and us, to the heart of his self-offering mission to all creation.
Despite the suffering recorded in the psalm (and experienced by Christ), its overall tone is hopeful and trusting. Quite the reverse of a cry of dereliction, in fact. The movement is from a description of the writer’s need, followed by a realization of the trustworthiness and holiness of God, proceeding to a resolution confirming the believer’s trust in God’s will for him. In this psalm’s case, from verse 25 onward we have set out before us like some heavenly vista a picture of the good things God has in store for those who remain faithful through suffering. As Christians who are part of the “great congregation” (verse 25), this psalm if anything accentuates for us the inexpressible significance of that single death on Mount Calvary. It is the supreme paradox of the shameful and the most glorious, the mystery of the divine who suffers for and with us now and for eternity.
For Reflection
How does this psalm shape your understanding of Christ’s life and death?
Prayer
Suffering Lord, look down upon me with your gentle eyes and give me endurance, hope, and love. Glory be to you. Amen.
Psalm 23
It’s pretty difficult to write about a psalm that is so well known and so much loved. What more can be said, you may wonder, about words that have given strength to generations of people in the midst of trouble and hope to those who are beginning to struggle? Well, may I just simply direct your attention anew to a few things?
How
