{"id":537,"date":"2010-12-16T09:14:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T15:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=537"},"modified":"2010-12-16T11:37:24","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T17:37:24","slug":"who-can-ascend-who-indeed-the-psalms-in-our-worship-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/who-can-ascend-who-indeed-the-psalms-in-our-worship-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Who can ascend? Who indeed? The Psalms in Our Worship 16"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mark

Mark Hamilton, PhD - Associate Dean, Professor of Old Testament, ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/p><\/div>\n

Psalm 24 is one of the best known in the Psalter, thanks in part to Handel’s Messiah<\/em>, which gives us a beautiful choral arrangement of the last few verses.\u00a0 But the majesty of that oratorio can mask an important piece of the psalm, namely, its inquisitive nature and the longing it expresses to be part of something just out of reach.<\/p>\n

Psalm 24 is a pilgrimage psalm.\u00a0 It asks what qualities are required of those who would go up to the Temple to worship (“who can ascend the hill of Yhwh?”) and describes what sounds like a procession of the Ark or some other symbol of God (“lift your tops, o gates, and be elevated you ancient doors, so the glorious King may enter”).\u00a0 For Protestants, the idea of making a pilgrimage to a holy site may seem alien, but of course it is all over the Bible.\u00a0 The conviction behind pilgrimage is that, while God is everywhere and is approachable wherever the human heart genuinely longs for the approach, there are places on earth where, because of history and ritual and the special significations of the worshiping community’s experiences with God, the encounter is more profound or even easier.\u00a0 Hence pilgrimage to those places.\u00a0 Hence the pilgrimage to Jerusalem that figures in this psalm and in such a large collection of Psalms as 120-134 (The Psalms of Ascent).<\/p>\n

But there is something still deeper here.\u00a0 The pilgrim of the psalm must think about more than just a physical locale or a building or even the wondrous experiences of worship there.\u00a0 She or he must also ask about the state of her or his own life.\u00a0 There is simply no separation between the internal and the external, the private and the public, in the life of the worshiper.\u00a0 What appears on the outside reflects closely what flourishes on the inside.\u00a0 (“Out of the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaks,” somebody said!)\u00a0 Imagining coming before God makes us better people.\u00a0 And striving to be better people makes us want to come before God.\u00a0 It’s all connected.<\/p>\n

So the psalmist knows this.\u00a0 Wholeness and peace come when we know this.<\/p>\n

Finally, then, that brings us to the most interesting verse in the psalm, verse 6: “This is the generation of those seeking Him\/of those seeking your face, o Jacob.”\u00a0 There are several odd things about the line.\u00a0 First of all, what is “this”?\u00a0 The most obvious answer would be to look at verse 5, which talks about receiving a blessing and righteousness.\u00a0 The parallelism of 5a and 5b would make us think that righteousness is the blessing, that the loyalty of the ethically and spiritually mature person to God matches God’s loyalty to that person.\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 But then the line takes a truly surprising turn in 6b.\u00a0 We expect it to read, “the one seeking your face o Lord.”\u00a0 But it does not.\u00a0 It says “Jacob.”\u00a0 Scholars have, understandably, emended the text in various ways, and all the ancient versions try to alter the line to what we expect.\u00a0 Maybe the change is in order.\u00a0 Or maybe the Hebrew text’s shift is deliberate, not in order to turn the reader from seeking Yhwh, but in order to emphasize the fact that seeking the welfare of God’s people is the same as seeking the presence of God.\u00a0 Again, everything connects together.<\/p>\n

So who can ascend the hill of the Lord?\u00a0 Anyone who truly wants to.\u00a0 All we have to do is throw away the sins that easily beset us and be still enough to celebrate the triumph of the glorious king who enters the place where an expectant people long for that entry to happen.\u00a0 May that happen during this season of Advent, and well beyond.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psalm 24 is one of the best known in the Psalter, thanks in part to Handel’s Messiah, which gives us a beautiful choral arrangement of the last few verses.\u00a0 But the majesty of that oratorio can mask an important piece of the psalm, namely, its inquisitive nature and the longing it expresses to be part […]<\/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-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWho can ascend? Who indeed? 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