Often our discussions of worship focus on what we should do.\u00a0 Do we sing modern praise songs or just the great hymns of the past?\u00a0 Do we sing a cappella, with an organ, with a rock band, or whatever?\u00a0 Does the preaching last a few minutes or quite a few?\u00a0 Does the communion table figure prominently in the worship space or not at all?<\/p>\n
These questions have a place, and someone must decide them.\u00a0 Nor are they all equally important.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
For the author of Psalm 12, the answer is straightforward.\u00a0 This little poem turns lament into a statement of hope.\u00a0 Verses 1-4 (Hebrew 2-5) protest the inequities in the world.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 “Save whoever needs saving,” seems to be the idea.\u00a0 (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.)\u00a0 Rescue those in distress because their neighbors abuse language to elevate themselves and denigrate others.\u00a0 So the Psalmist pleads with God.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 ‘I will help him’, God affirms to him.”\u00a0 (There are different ways to translate the Hebrew, but this is close enough!)\u00a0 God’s promise to deliver is enough to turn lament into a statement of confidence.<\/p>\n
Worship is the cry of suffering humanity to God.\u00a0 If we do not need to cry for ourselves, then we still cry out for the sake of others.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
For us, perhaps the question is whether we really expect God to rise up and help the oppressed.\u00a0 Or do we assume that things will basically rock along as they are?\u00a0 Unless we answer that question, our worship may not be very worthwhile because our actions may be the only ones involved.\u00a0 And that would be a great tragedy.\u00a0 A lamentable one, really.\u00a0 More next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Often our discussions of worship focus on what we should do.\u00a0 Do we sing modern praise songs or just the great hymns of the past?\u00a0 Do we sing a cappella, with an organ, with a rock band, or whatever?\u00a0 Does the preaching last a few minutes or quite a few?\u00a0 Does the communion table figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n