The Psalms
of Orientation sing about a stable creation, about a God of justice and
goodness, and about happy, prosperous family and social life. In these Psalms we get to sing hearty
praise. In some of them we find
ourselves glad because enemies have been punished, or even wiped out. In some others, God is seen to have protected
particularly the weak and the needy.
These Psalms sing about a reliable and generous faith, a sure, confident
defence and foundation:
You are kind and full of
compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love.
How good you are, Lord, to all,
compassionate to all your creatures…
The eyes of all creatures look to
you and you give them their food in due time.
You open wide your hand, grant the desires
of all who live… [Ps 145]
Well, certainly
in the parish church on a lovely warm sunny Harvest Festival morning… Or, it may be, at either a wedding or a
funeral:
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not
want; he makes me down to lie
In pastures green, he leadeth me
the quiet waters by.
My soul he doth restore again… [Ps 23]
I imagine
these Psalms are sung sometimes more in hope than in faith. Perhaps the poetry is importantly soothing
and reassuring. I find it very hard to
be critical, because these are very ancient songs and they have supported Jews
and Christians through hideous times:
It is the Lord who keeps faith
for ever, who is just to those who are oppressed.
It is God who gives bread to the
hungry, the Lord, who sets prisoners free,
The Lord who gives sight to the
blind, who raises up those who are bowed down,
The Lord, who protects the
stranger and upholds the widow and orphan.
It is the Lord who loves the just but
thwarts the path of the wicked… [Ps 146]
Well, good
luck with that, you might think. There
are plenty of times when this kind of faith can seem forlorn indeed, or simply
naive. But one of the lessons of the
Psalms is precisely that we can’t pick and choose. Scholars may find it useful to separate the
Psalms into categories – Orientation, Disorientation, New Orientation – but
life is not so easily categorised and neither are people. Life is usually quite a mess. We can live all three categories at once --
sometimes backwards. And the Psalms
taken together, as a whole, reflect just that.
Meanwhile…
I lift up my eyes to the
mountains; from where shall come my help?
My help shall come from the Lord
who made heaven and earth.
The Lord is your guard and your
shade; at your right hand he stands.
By day the sun shall not smite
you, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will guard you from
evil, he will guard your soul.
The Lord will guard your going
and coming both now and for ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment