What about the Psalms – His Love Endures forever!
Psalm 136
Do any of you remember your early trips to the Library? I remember at first there was no real pressure. The teacher took us in and showed us where the simple picture books were. You could get one and look at it. And then just leave it right on the table. You did not have to put it back yourself.
Then it is pretty exciting when I got to check out a book and even take it home. The only pressure was the now I had to get it back by a certain day.
For me the library was a pretty cool place until the day when I was expected not to just look around for fun but I was to do research. Over time papers due on a subject got harder and harder.
At some point, I started needing the help of a librarian to direct me to the right materials.
In a way, today I am serving as a librarian and offering you an orientation to the library that I hope all of you have free and easy access too.
Today is a preparation of what we will look into this month.
We are building a foundation of sorts related to the Christian Library. I am talking about the Bible. 66 books divided into the old and new testaments. Books of history, Law, adventure and poetry.
Our focus in general is on poetry which is found through out scripture but, we will be looking mostly at the Psalms.
Let’s start with a few points of basic overview of the Psalms.
Within the Book of Psalms there are 150 chapters which come from a variety of authors and are related to different events and situations.
A large number are attributed to David and Solomon and some are associated with Moses or others. But the only way we can connect the chapters to an author is to use the editor’s notes which are thought not to be a part to the original chapters. They were added by someone other than the author perhaps centuries after the text was written as the chapters were collected for worship.
The Book of psalms is a collection of poems or songs separated into 5 sections which were put together for use in the Temple.
Ok, poetry. Quick show of hands, how many enjoy poetry?
How many can write poetry?
Personally, I have trouble with understanding most poetry. I had to read a lot a couple of years ago in a literature class. The teacher would ask the class what some poem meant.
If asked, I normally could only explain what it said. “Well the story is about a young man that is secretly in love and he describes how much it hurts.”
It seems that the professor had a different version of most of the poems; because, she told us about all kinds of other stuff that I did not see in my copy.
It wasn’t even in the foot notes.
She suggested that some how this lack of understanding in what the author was trying to communicate was my fault.
In my opinion, the author decided to be less than direct and clear.
I recall a poem about “The Fall of Icarus.” I was assured that it was a classic poem based on a ancient myth and was a classic.
Icraus was a young man that wanted to fly so that he could reach the gods. It seems that he built a set of wings with feathers he collected and attached together on a simple frame with wax.
-- I have read in history books where that has been tried again and again and failed every time.
It says, in the poem that Icarus flew high enough to the sun that the wax melted and the wings fell apart and he fell to his death. It was sort of a downer.
It was hard to read as a poem, the language of the 1500’s and I thought it was good just to figure out the story.
I was amazed when the Teacher went into a long discussion about the human condition, how we all wish to fly in one way or another and more often than not come crashing to the ground.
She said that this poem was about hubris….I did not know the meaning of the word. It wasn’t in the poem. Basically, pride, and what happens to people that are too prideful.
Folks, some of what was explained made since…. when it was explained. But, there was not real explanation of that in the story.
To me it was a pretty good story and it helped me to feel good that I had not tried to fly with wings I made since I was very young. It made me feel good about myself for not making the same mistake.
My first point is that poetry is a form of communication that expresses more than just the basic information.
-It communicates emotion, longing and point of view.
-It often uses word pictures that give meaning more than actual facts.
The Psalms are Hebrew poetry which is probably a big mystery to most of us.
The biggest reason is because we expect poetry to have rhyming words and rhythm.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet;
And so are you
Then there are other great literary works like:
Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
But when we read the Bible, the Psalms, we don’t hear the rhymes; we can’t even seem to find a rhythm.
So why should we care if we are reading poetry.
CS Lewis, a Christian writer from the 1940’s, (Chronicles of Narnia) describes the importance of the Psalms like this:
“What must be said … is that the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons. … Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry.
They must be read as poems if they are to be understood; no less than French must be read as French or English as English. Otherwise we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.”
It is important to understand when we are reading poetry because, poetry communicates differently than a history book.
A history book includes facts and figures and events with the idea that this is a record of real details.
If we are reading a story that starts out, Once upon a time, do we make any assumptions about the makeup of the information in the story?
Is it telling us that dragons are real to that bears can talk and eat porage?
If poetry is understood to communicate differently than a history book we need to know which we are reading.
Not all Bibles identify the kind of material we are reading. There are many places in scripture where poetry is directly in line with history book material with no mention of the change in type.
I believe that confuses us as we read through scripture and it makes us feel like we can’t read and interpret the Bible for ourselves. Sadly I believe that because we can’t understand the language and the intent of how the material is intended to communicate we put the book on the coffee table and carry it around more than we actually read for insight and understanding.
The Bible is filled with all kinds of translation challenges and poetry is probably one of the biggest.
In poetry, it is difficult for an author to get rhyme and rhythm in the first place and then to have the meaning to be clear takes a lot of skill.
But what do you think happens to a poem from another language when it is translated to English?
It is incredibly difficult and possibly impossible to bring all three components from another language.
The psalms were written in Hebrew which has been translated into Greek and then later into English. How much rhyme and rhythm and original meaning do you think could survive?
As we read scriptures we often become confused at word usage and meaning because of repeated words and sentence structure seems really odd. Many times when that happens we are looking at poetry.
In the King James Version of the scripture does not seem to recognize that the psalms and a lot of other scripture were originally written as poetry instead of a literal history.
Many other translations mark the text in the Psalms to indicate the special nature that poetry includes, such as imagery, symbolism and emotions and not just straight details.
So if translators midded it. And if poetry is nearly imposible to properly translate what is the point.
Hebrew poetry is different than what we call poetry.
It was never meant to rhyme even when it was first written.
There has been no loss of word play in translation. The simple between blue and you was not a tool that needed preservation.
Depending on the translation you prefer, he translators attempt to repeat a similar rhythm using modern words. But, the rhythm is though to aid in memorization more that to influence the interpretation.
Hebrew poetry focuses attention by using a pattern between certain lines in the poem.
They call it parallelism.
It works like this, the first line of the poem is expanded or restated or emphasized in the second line.
It can be a statement of clarification, perhaps completion
or it can be an opposite or contrasting statement.
There are several flavors or forms within Hebrew poetry and we won’t go into those details directly.
There are some common understanding of poetry, we expect the information we read to included figures of speech and the use of similes, like, her eyes were like blue pools of crystal clear water.
In the 23rd psalm the Lord is described as a shepherd and caring for us as we are his sheep, this is a metaphor.
It would be a BAAAD idea to take the passage to mean that we really are sheep.
What you need to understand right now is that when you read psalms you are reading material that is intended to get your mind to meditating. It is intended to get your imagination and experience to start working in the theater of the mind.
It is like listening to radio stories like on the Christian station in Chattanooga on Saturday morning. I like, “Ranger Bill, warrior of the woodlands.”
When I listen to the story I can take my personal experience and let the images that the story tells come alive in my mind.
When they describe going to the mountains, I see the Rockies, massive and sheer and snow with winding roads. When they talk about bears, I think of the nature shows from TV showing me black, brown and grisly bears.
They don’t have to describe every detail for me to have a picture in my mind.
The poetry of the Psalms can speak to us just as clearly today as it did thousands of years ago because, the poems or songs allow us to join in the intensity of the story.
Now we need to expand the idea just a little. The psalms are poetry but they are also songs. The book of Psalms is a hymnal. The titles listed in our Bibles indicate certain instructions as to the events and usage of the psalms. In Hebrew they are called Tehillim (pronounced "the-hill-leem"), which means “songs of praise.” In the Greek Psalmoi, (Psalm oi) which started out as plucked strings and was later interpreted as “ sacred songs sung with accompaniment.”
-- I hope that you will agree with me that music makes a difference in worship.
Music is a powerful part of Jewish worship, Christianity is no different. The book of psalms is though to be the hymn book of the temple. It is edited and divided up similar to our hymnals today. Sections for different purposes, like praise, prayer, installation.
Our hymnal contains psalms the new praise music like we opened our service with today were based on the psalms.
If you were to spend some time listening to the newer music of our day, you would find a large percentage of it is again using the lines of scripture in the psalms and other parts of scripture.
We don’t use the psalms enough as a church. And because of that then we probably don’t use them in our personal devotion time.
If you will read the psalms you will find that they authors seem to speak freely from their hearts. In fact the authors themselves almost fade from our minds as we speak them because so often they speak just as longingly from our hearts.
The prayers come alive with our praise, fears and longings.
This morning I saved our scripture reading for us to share as an act of worship.
Here is how we will do this.
I Read…the sections of Psalm 136, you will read or recite the response. My part changes every line …yours stays the same.
You part is, His love endures forever.
So after I read a line, the response is the same every time.
I would like to do this is parts so to speak. The first few times this side do the reply, then I will point to the other side for several lines and then I will point at both sides so that we are all participating in the reading at the same time.
READ SCRIPTURES
The Psalms are useful in corporate and private worship. They are songs, poems ..Prayers to God, about God and For God. They are an important part of worship.
Folks when we come to the house of God, it is not really the only place we expect to find Him…It is the place where our personal worship is joined with our church family and raised to God unashamed, with tears of repentance, tears of joy, devotion and direct attention on our relationship with God.
All Glory be to God!
