Psalm 13--Worship Resources

Music:
UMH: Psalter for Psalm 13, #746
UMH: Be Still My Soul, #534
UMH: Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, $351
FWS: How Long, O Lord, #2209
W&S: Falling on My Knees, #3099
W&S: Bidden, Unbidden, 3019
Psalm 13 (How Long O Lord)--Brian Doerksen
Psalm 13--Nate Hale
How Long (feat. Bethany John)--The Psalms Project (Rel. 12/6/2013)
Der 13. Psalm "Herr, wie lange" Op. 27--Johannes Brahms


I Believe--Mark Miller
“I believe in the sun,
even when it is not shining.
I believe in love,
even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God,
even when God is silent.”

This statement of faith was scrawled on a cellar wall in Cologne by a Jewish person hiding from teh Nazi Gestapo during WWII. American soldiers discovered it below a Star of David when searching the bombed house. This poem is the text for Mark Miller's anthem, "I Believe."

Video

How Long from The Inspire Collective on Vimeo.



Depression Conversation Starters:

From "Adventures in Depression, Part Two" Hyperbole and a Half

"Depression 'second leading cause of disability worldwide'" - Medical News Today

Depression Basics -- Halfofus.com

Psalm 13--Exegetical Thoughts

• Before I read the commentaries for the lament psalms, I hadn't realized that a lament is actually a "call for help" (Limburg 38). Honestly? I thought a lament was simply a complaint, a wailing, a plaintive cry. And while a complaint is certainly a part of a lament psalm, it's not the whole story--at least not in Psalm 13. Understanding the genre of lament as a call for help helps the reader to understand that Psalm 13 is a prayer that leads somewhere, both in the moment of prayer and in studying it. It offers both comfort and  theological instruction about the relationship between God and humanity.
  
• Scholars refer to the three characters of the lament psalms--God, self, and enemy-- in terms of theology, psychology, and sociology (see McCann 86, Mays 78, Strawn 71). In the lament, it becomes clear that something in these relationships has gone awry, something is troubling. In today's world, we tend to treat each of these areas (theology, psychology, and sociology) as their own distinct spheres, as if they don't intersect at all. What Psalm 13 points out is that these are deeply connected, and if there is an imbalance in any of them, there is an imbalance in all--we lose our identity as people of God, as ourselves, and as a member of a human community. We "sleep the sleep of death" (vs. 3).

• Though there is a radical turn in verses 5-6, I think it's important to point out the address of the lament: directly to God. This gesture lets us know that it's OK to come to God with our worst and at our worst. Crying out to God isn't a crime. But something about it seems strange to us. As McCann points out, there is a pointed avoidance of lament psalms in our culture (85-86), as if we cannot make sense of them. But I think the fact that texts that border of blasphemous are considered to be a part of our cannon is important. Being honest about our circumstances is just a part of being a faithful person, warts, complaints, and all (Mays 78, Limburg 38).
  

• I want to focus in on verse 2a: How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? When I read this, I am immediately transported to the time I spent answering a suicide hotline. Whether the voices were overflowing with pain or numbed by their struggles with it, their cries gave voice to the uncertainty of their plight, of knowing they were in the midst of suffering, but not knowing how begin see anything beyond it. It was like a tunnel vision of suffering. McCann's literal reading of the Hebrew here highlights the isolation these callers voiced: "How long must I hold counsel in my soul" and "sorrow in my heart" (91). Theirs were literally calls for help. They saw no way but the way of death before them. They needed light in their eyes, a way to see beyond their circumstances. One of the techniques we were instructed to use was to ask what coping mechanisms for difficult feelings had worked for callers in the past. Then, we would explore with them how those very skills might be available to them now. 

• This is how I read the turn in verses 5-6: a remembrance of God's faithfulness in the past illuminates their future. So often, we want our answers to appear out of the blue, illuminating a bright new future, divorced, somehow, from the suffering we have felt. Mays eloquently lays out how this thinking is incorrect, and how the "agony and the ecstasy belong together as the secret of our identity" (Preaching 168). The lightening of the eyes that occurs is not into a new reality, but is in a remembered reality of a faithful God. And in the remembrance, a new way of living emerges. Perhaps Psalm 13 is a lament of one who has taken the wrong "way" (Ps. 1). And perhaps it's a lament that helps the sufferer find her way back to he way of the righteous after all. 

Psalm 1--Worship Resources

Music:

UMH: Psalter for Psalm 1, #738

UMH: #601 "Thy Word Is a Lamp"

Faith We Sing: "I Will Enter His Gates" 

"Blessed Is the Man" Psalm 1:1-2, The Psalms Project

"He Is Like a Tree" Psalm 1:3

Video:
Psalm 1 - Sacred Guardian by Elijah Aaron

Prayer for Illumination from Worship & Song

Eternal God,

in the reading of the Scripture, may your Word be heard;

in the meditations of our hearts, may your Word be known;

and in the faithfulness of our lives, may your Word be shown. Amen.

Collect based on Psalm 1:

God of torah,

who invites all to follow the way--

   the way that leads to life,

   the way that leads to peace,

   the way that leads each of us to this very moment--

watch over our learning

so that we may be more than educated,

   more than well-read,

   more than simply proficient;

watch over our learning

so that we may become

students of your instruction

   students who delight in your instruction

as we continue in the way.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ,

   our trailblazer and our teacher.

Amen.

Articles and Illustrations:

"10 Decisions That Will Make You Happier and Healtier" Huffingtonpost.com

"10 Things Happy People Do Differently" Psychologytoday.com

"What the Happiest People Know for Sure" Oprah.com

"Atheism as ultimate white privilege" patheos.com

Psalm 1--Exegetical Thoughts

• Psalm 1 functions as a theological introduction to the Psalms (McCann 25). Its introduction of the themes of "happiness," righteousness, and wickedness helps to orient the reader of Psalms in these concepts. Strawn points especially to the nearly archetypal characterization of the righteous versus the wicked, and its inherent urging to follow the path of the righteous (53). However, the most important theological function of Psalm 1 is to emphasize the importance of torah--or instruction. McCann would point out that he Psalms themselves function as torah (see 25-40). As a theological introduction to the Psalms, Psalm 1 lets the reader know that "the way" continues by reading on. Emphasizing this aspect of Psalm 1 would be especially important in the context of a Bible study on the Psalms, or in a larger consideration of the book of Psalms. For preaching purposes, though, I think it's important to focus on "the world within Psalm 1" (Strawn 51).
• It had never occurred to me before that Psalm 1 is a beatitude (Mays 40). First of all, in today's culture, I think that beatitudes that describe a faith-oriented way of life make a counter-cultural statement. As McCann points out, Psalm 1 actuall points out that the wicked are actually those who think of themselves as, "self-instructed, self-directed, and self-ruled" (38). American culture so proudly affirms these attributes that the opening line of Psalm 1 could be read as a radical statement: happiness comes from openness to instruction and obedience to that instruction. Happiness from obedience? From discipline? Boy...THAT is counter-cultural stuf.
• Of course, when reminded of beatitudes, one cannot help but think of Matthew 5: 1-12. So, how does it compare? Like Matthew 5's beatitudes, Psalm 1 describes the ideal faithful individual. While Matthew gives us some pretty solid examples of how this faithfulness is carried out, Psalm 1 only gives us one: she makes constantly available to God's instruction. Then, the beatitude veers into metaphor, doing more to support this assertion than to flesh it out. Psalm 1 is not as explicit in its description of acts of justice and righteousness, but seems to assume that acts of justice (vs. 5a) and righteousness (vs. 5b, 6) will flow naturally from the one practice of availability to torah.
• For me, the most exegetically compelling part of Psalm 1 is the relationship of the wicked and the righteous. What Strawn characterizes as simple dualism (53), I see as a much more complicated matter. In fully characterizing the righteous and the wicked, most exegetes look to the larger use of these words on the psalmic vocabulary or in the Hebrew canon. Mays describes the three main roles of the wicked in the psalms as characters drawn in contrast to the righteous as a warning, as those who hurt others, and as those who threaten the faithful (43). However, he goes on to say, "In all their roles, the wicked represent the incongruence in the human world between the will of God and the will of human beings" (43). McCann also sketches the wicked as those who, through misguided autonomy, cut themselves off from their source of life (39). However, a close reading reveals that casting these journeys of the righteous and the wicked as divergent to the point of life or death may be overstating things. The text does not use language that refers to the actual state of being alive or to physical death. As McCann pointed out in class, "perish" in verse 6b is actually better translated as "leads to ruin" (9/16/13). And I think it is worth pointing out that it is not the wicked themselves that perish, but their way. It begs the question...what happens then?
• I think this is an important interpretive point. Mays encourages us to move beyond a reading of proud legalism in Psalm 1, and in doing so, he points out our error in wanting always "to begin over and over with God's forgiveness and saving work, because we are fascinated with our sin" (Preaching 162). Humanity will always be fascinated with our sins, will always be distracted from the way of righteousness onto the way of wickedness. But what I believe the last line of Psalm 1 tells us is not that you're wicked and then you die. Rather, I believe that it indicates that when that way runs out--and it will run out: the money will no longer satisfy, the possessions won't sustain, the independence will become lonely, and the misplaced values will prove empty--there is always the path of the righteousness that extends before us.  We may have to retrace our steps a bit to get to it, but it's there. The way of the wicked will perish. But God is not dooming the wicked to eternally wander out of God's presence.
• The gracious aspect of the Psalm is illuminated in this reading: torah is always available to us. Though we might not always make use of it, it is there. We walk in the way of the righteous when we turn to it; in the way of the wicked when we don't. And I believe that a picture of the simultaneously righteous and wicked is a much more relevant (and gracious) reading of the text than of the dualistic understanding of the two.

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  Illustration by Shel Silverstein "Where the Sidewalk Ends"