{"id":692,"date":"2011-03-30T10:18:47","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T15:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=692"},"modified":"2011-03-31T11:01:11","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T16:01:11","slug":"the-shalom-blues-the-psalms-in-our-worship-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/the-shalom-blues-the-psalms-in-our-worship-27\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shalom Blues: The Psalms in our Worship 27"},"content":{"rendered":"

On some days, it’s hard to get your thoughts together.\u00a0 The allergy medicines and the crush of routine conspire to prevent it.\u00a0 On such days, it is easy to treat even the dramatic and beautiful lackadaisically. Here are a few observations, as tightly woven as the meds permit!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allowing such a thing to happen when considering Psalm 35 would be a pity.\u00a0 So let me begin with a text, not just my feelings about it.\u00a0 Many individual lines of the psalm seem cliched, leaving an initial impression of a fairly hackneyed composition.\u00a0 But this superficial impression changes on closer investigation.\u00a0 The psalm begins familiarly enough with a cry to God for help against oppressors.\u00a0 The psalmist asks God to join him or her in court (“oppose my opponents” or even “sue those suing me”) and then offers a series of synonymous pleas (“strengthen the shield,” “rise up in help of me,” “brandish spear and dart,” “speak to my inner being,” “let them [the foes] be ashamed” and all the rest).\u00a0 It is the language of conflict, or as the Greeks would say, of agon<\/em>.\u00a0 Life is portrayed as conflict, struggle between the good and the evil.<\/p>\n

Of course, it is tempting to hear such an opening as the ultimate in self-serving behavior.\u00a0 What could be more narcissistic than to believe that the infinite sovereign of the universe would take my side in my petty quarrels?\u00a0 (Nothing, that’s what!)\u00a0 But what if the psalmist really is under assault by evil?\u00a0 Does our suspicion of the text reflect our own discomfort with sham religion (“woe to you Bible professors, hypocrites!”).\u00a0 Or does our suspicion reflect the cynicism borne of privilege.\u00a0 No one is hunting us.\u00a0 Our quarrels are petty.\u00a0 Our complaints are those of the powerful who don’t get every single thing we want.\u00a0 But what if some complaints are legitimate and some are truly oppressed?\u00a0 What prayer should they pray?\u00a0 How should the rest of us hear their prayers?<\/p>\n

The long indictments of the psalm (vv. 1-8, 11-18) describe a world in which some people use all their resources to acquire more, regardless of whom they run over in the process.\u00a0 The empirical observations of the psalmist — who can deny the existence of such practices? — depict a cast of characters that could be lifted off today’s newspaper.\u00a0 Wickedness is defined as antisocial behavior that leaves the vulnerable in the dust for the sake of the convenience of the powerful.<\/p>\n

Yet amid the indictments, there is another theme, the character of the defender of the vulnerable.\u00a0 It first appears in verses 9-10.\u00a0 Notice the description of God as “the one rescuing the poor from the one stronger than he or she is, yes the poor and the need from the one cheating\/swindling him or her.”\u00a0 A major touchstone in the Bible’s reflection on social solidarity is that God defends the vulnerable by opposing the greedy.<\/p>\n

The thread appears twice more, as the psalmist considers the character of human beings.\u00a0 He or she depicts himself or herself as the one who prayed for all the sick, including those who too greedy and self-absorbed to care for anyone else (vv. 12-14).\u00a0 The commitments normal to the social bonds of family extend to others beyond the family, and this extension marks a critical distinction between the righteous and the wicked.\u00a0 (The wicked just focus on their own families!)<\/p>\n

The psalm ends with the same thread as it summons others to join the petitioner in caring for the vulnerable.\u00a0 All who truly sing the psalm with an interest in their own lives, that is, those for whom the psalm becomes material for character formation, hear it as a summons to a religious life that includes good deeds.\u00a0 Without such deeds, religion becomes lifeless and a matter of mere words.<\/p>\n

The last couple of verses deserve a bit more elaboration:<\/p>\n

Let those taking pleasure from my loyalty [or loyalty to me?] celebrate and rejoice and say always,<\/p>\n

“Yhwh is great, delighting in the well-being [Hebrew: shalom<\/em>] of his servant.”<\/p>\n

And let my tongue report on your righteousness; let it praise you all the day.<\/p>\n

A few things are interesting.\u00a0 First, when verse 27 says “taking pleasure from my loyalty” (Hebrew: chafetse tsidqi<\/em>), it might be focusing on the psalmist’s righteousness\/loyalty\/justice (all possible translations) or on God’s righteousness\/loyalty\/justice toward the psalmist.\u00a0 Either is grammatically possible.\u00a0 Perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate.\u00a0 The second thing is the first clause in verse 28 (“my tongue reports”); the Hebrew verb yehgeh<\/em> is the same as the verb in Psalm 1:2, usually translated “meditates.”\u00a0 The delivered person has a one-track tongue if you please.\u00a0 There is not much else worth talking about.\u00a0 The moment of salvation, that is, of reintegration in the community of people who care about each other because they care about God, becomes the content of the story the psalmist sings (and therefore that everyone who sings the song sings).<\/p>\n

Miles Davis once said that “Sometimes you have to play a long time to play like yourself.”\u00a0 I hope that hearing psalms like this one will let me begin to sing in my own voice and that that voice will sound like that of the one who delivers the weak from the one stronger than he or she is!\u00a0 Better get practicing.\u00a0 Better get practicing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On some days, it’s hard to get your thoughts together.\u00a0 The allergy medicines and the crush of routine conspire to prevent it.\u00a0 On such days, it is easy to treat even the dramatic and beautiful lackadaisically. Here are a few observations, as tightly woven as the meds permit! Allowing such a thing to happen when […]<\/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-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Shalom Blues: The Psalms in our Worship 27 - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/the-shalom-blues-the-psalms-in-our-worship-27\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Shalom Blues: The Psalms in our Worship 27 - ACU Graduate School of Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On some days, it’s hard to get your thoughts together.\u00a0 The allergy medicines and the crush of routine conspire to prevent it.\u00a0 On such days, it is easy to treat even the dramatic and beautiful lackadaisically. 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