Often our discussions of worship focus on what we should do. Do we sing modern praise songs or just the great hymns of the past? Do we sing a cappella, with an organ, with a rock band, or whatever? Does the preaching last a few minutes or quite a few? Does the communion table figure prominently in the worship space or not at all?
These questions have a place, and someone must decide them. Nor are they all equally important. But all of them are beside the point compared to the more fundamental question, what do we think God does during our times of worship and beyond? The answer to that question so far eclipses the answers to the others in importance, that it must be our starting point for our reflections on worship.
For the author of Psalm 12, the answer is straightforward. This little poem turns lament into a statement of hope. Verses 1-4 (Hebrew 2-5) protest the inequities in the world. It is interesting that the opening does not say “save me” (though the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, adds the first-person pronoun) but simply asks God to “save” or “help” or “rescue.” “Save whoever needs saving,” seems to be the idea. (Thus the idea that 1 Timothy 2 comes to express in the beautifully simple claim that “God wants everyone to be saved” also implicitly undergirds this Psalm.) Rescue those in distress because their neighbors abuse language to elevate themselves and denigrate others. So the Psalmist pleads with God.
The last part of the psalm, verses 6-8, contrasts the purity of God’s words, in which nothing is wasted or hurtful or in any way defective, with the words of wicked people, who glorify themselves. The clarity of the idea here is also a beautiful thing: language can be, and often is, abused by those for whom truth is something to be manipulated for their own benefit. Yet God never uses words this way, and the purity of God’s language mirrors the purity of God’s mind and thus of the world God is creating.
In the middle of the Psalm is the telltale turning point: “‘From the plundering of the poor, the suffering of the needy — now shall I arise’, says the Lord. ‘I will help him’, God affirms to him.” (There are different ways to translate the Hebrew, but this is close enough!) God’s promise to deliver is enough to turn lament into a statement of confidence.
Worship is the cry of suffering humanity to God. If we do not need to cry for ourselves, then we still cry out for the sake of others. Not to do so is to join the wicked in shaping language to create a reality that does not reflect God’s pure heart and tongue.
For us, perhaps the question is whether we really expect God to rise up and help the oppressed. Or do we assume that things will basically rock along as they are? Unless we answer that question, our worship may not be very worthwhile because our actions may be the only ones involved. And that would be a great tragedy. A lamentable one, really. More next time.