Year C Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany February 4th, 2001
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
Web page http://lordofthelake.org
By The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
E-mail pastor@southshore.com
Heavenly Father, “I am a sinful person,” thank you for sending Jesus to pay for my sins by his death on the cross. Amen.
Title: “I am a sinful person.”
Psalm 138:1-8
This is a psalm from the postexilic period. While it is classified as an Individual Thanksgiving Psalm, it is suited for communal worship, either with a soloist praying in the name of the community or the community identifying with an individual’s good fortune by including their own in his. In the background of these postexilic psalms there is always the great and paradigmatic experience of the, “Return from Babylonian Exile.” The people would see every individual answer to prayer as a specific, if small, instance of that great deed God did for all of them, an example of “corporate personality” in action. In this psalm the writer may have been delivered from an illness or some other calamity. In any event, it would be an example of moving from an negative experience of life to a positive one and credited to Yahweh’s love and fidelity.
Typical of all thanksgiving, the psalmist calls on the spirits of the heavens and the rulers of the earth to join in the praise, to expand it to a scope and volume appropriate to the revelation of God’s limitless love. While the physical locale may have originally been the outside gate of the Temple or just outside the gate of the Holy of Holies, the inner Temple, the psychological locale of gratitude for answered prayer would enable to psalm to be sung anywhere.
The structure is straightforward: In verses one to three, give thanks for deliverance; In verses four to six, invite all nations through their kings to join in the sentiment; and verses seven and eight, state confidence in Yahweh’s presence and enduring love. This is not great poetry. It is for ordinary people whose religious life is relatively routine and are quite used to the oft-repeated phrases and ideas expressed. It attempts to bring the extraordinary awareness of God into ordinary time.
In verse one, I thank you, Lord, with all my heart: The psalmist makes a conscious effort to retrieve his original experience when God granted him deliverance from whatever disorienting condition he was in before his prayer was answered.
Before the gods: It is not clear when the Israelite people stopped believing that other gods existed at all. No doubt the belief existed long after the prophets had preached otherwise, especially among common folk. By now, they were generally believed to be lesser gods than Yahweh, if they existed at all, and they were frequently identified or grouped in with “angels, “ heavenly spirits who ministered to and for Yahweh. The LXX translates the word here in Hebrew, ‘elohim, with the Greek “angels,” a word meaning both heavenly spirits and messengers. The psalmist is calling on superworldly powers to both witness and join in his praise of God’s goodness to him. The arena of the Temple and worshipping community is not a big enough audience for the great sentiments he is expressing. Later, in verse four, he will call on all the earth in the personages of their kings to do the same. He is very much aware of the inadequacy of his little contribution of praise to so great a God.
In verse two, for your fidelity and love: Unlike the pagan gods who were arbitrary, unpredictable in their response, Yahweh was always there, always the same, always consistent. He behaved according to a discernible pattern and that was Hebrew hesed, “love,” a term which summed up his entire range of attitudes toward his people.
Toward your holy Temple: When an Arab prays, no matter where he is, he faces Meccah, the Holy City. So, too, “toward your Temple” can be anywhere. It is the focus which is important, not the locus.
You have exalted over all your name and your promise: His deeds far exceeded his fame, what people said and sung about him. They are beyond words, yet words are all he had to express his enlarged heart.
In verse three, strengthened my spirit: Lit, “You made me proud in my soul with strength.” Yahweh widened his throat so he could breathe, live, freely, thus making him capable of stronger praise of him in words and firmer witness to him in deeds.
In verse four, all the kings will praise you: This is better taken as a wish or invitation, that is, “Let all the kings…” or “May all the kings…” First of all, he talks as if he were a king himself and some scholars think this is a royal psalm sung by a king. His sentiment is really that he feels as if God has treated him “like a king” and so he can address them all as equals. They represent all the nations and so he wants everybody to join in the thanksgiving and praise. He alone is too small to be equal to the task. When a person is grateful he or she wants everyone to share in the joy as in Luke 15.
In verse six, the Lord is on high: God’s “glory” is sometimes associated with great height. From this high vantage point he can see all things, great and small, high and low. “Height” is also associated with human pride. The “high” and mighty have no time or care for the little people.
But cares for the lowly: Yahweh is unique among the gods. They care not for the lowly. He is an embarrassment to them for he violates divine etiquette and stoops to touch them and pick them up. In fact, he treats them like kings. The earthly kings also ignore or disdain the lowly. They are beneath their dignity. Not so with Yahweh. Because of this they, like the gods, have a hard time justifying their behavior toward the oppressed, marginal, unimportant, common folk.
Knows the proud from afar: Yahweh can spot a phony from the loftiest heights of his grandeur.
In verse seven, in the midst of dangers you guard my life: This is the pattern of God’s behavior the psalmist has experienced time and again. He knows that even when, especially when, the evidence is to the contrary, God is always faithful, always there. The “power” of his enemies, in so far as they are also God’s enemies, is only apparent and certainly temporary.
In verse eight, never forsake the work of your hands: This is not in the imperative mood. It is not a command, but an observation. It means God never causes his handiwork, humans, to be forsaken by him. They might do that, but not him. This results in supreme confidence.
Christians see the life, death and resurrection of Jesus repeated and relived every time God moves them from a negative situation to a positive one. Every time they are saved from any and all distress they experience again the Christ event. Jews see the Exodus, especially before the exile, and the Return from Exile pretty much the same way. In thanking God for even the smallest favor they see his constancy, fidelity, love made evident in his great deeds to benefit the whole nation now made evident in even small ones to benefit the most insignificant individual. It matters not the size of the event, the praise is the same, because the God who loves is the same always.
Thanking is a specific form of praise, hardly distinguishable from praise. It takes a gift and turns it around, back onto the giver. The recipient sees through and past the gift to the giver. In saying thanks, in recognizing the source, the recipient gives a gift too. It may be small and in no way equal to the gift received, but it is all the recipient has to give in return. As another psalm asks, “ How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me?” It is true, the Lord does treat us like kings. Yet, it is not surprising. We are his sons and daughters. We are part of the royal family. Undeservedly, true. Yet, true nonetheless.
He treats us so in order that we might be inspired to treat others as he does. For all his loftiness, his height, length, breadth and depth, he has no trouble condescending to relate to us in love. He showers us, literally and liberally, with gifts, some of which we foolishly complain about: it rains at the wrong time; the gift does not fit out propensities; the gift is not as good as the one he gave to another, etc. He does so not to spoil us, but to spur us to action, knowing how loved and accepted, treasured and valued we are. We cannot say “Thank you” with our lips and not with our lives. So, all of life, all behavior is an act of thanksgiving to the Lord for being the kind of Lord and kind Lord he is to all of us, all the earth and those in it and all the heavens and those there as well. Every act of thanksgiving, no matter how small, is of cosmic size and significance. It is not the gift in itself; it is to whom it is directed that makes it so.
We can praise God “in general” for all of his greatness, power, grandeur, intelligence, etc. and we can also thank him for all of his goodness, goodness to us, to others, to the world. But if we start there, start with the “in general,” with blanket praise and thanks, we will miss the very specific ways God graces and blesses us and the very specific ways he reveals his grandeur to us. In fact, the praising and thanking can be so generic that our prayers become simply formal. What we need to do is to praise and thank God for the very specific instances, small though they be or seem to be, and proceed from there to the more blanket and generalized praise and thanks. The psalmist here has clearly passed the specific acts of thanks and is now generalizing as regards the content of his gratitude, including everything. However, we do see the expanding process continuing as he moves from himself as an individual, specific and unique, “I thank you,” to the more expansive and inclusive “All the kings of the earth….” This movement from a particular instance of God’s grace to a general attitude of gratitude for all of God’s grace, both recognized and unrecognized, but presumed, is not only the movement of prayer but the movement of life, movement further and further into the realm of God where everything is a grace, a gift, a cause for gratitude. Eventually, we feel totally surrounded, encompassed, and absorbed by God. Though we meet the psalmist in midstream of this progressive movement and he does not give us specifics, we see it continuing in his ever-expanding vision of just who should be included in this act of gratitude. Prayer itself expands our consciousness as well as our gratitude.
To give thanks one must be conscious of having received a gift.
The more aware we are of the gifts we have been given the more we know about the Giver.
One constant gift God gives us is his protection. He guards our life and keeps us safe.
God treats us all like royalty; we are his children, heirs to his kingdom, whether in robes or in rags.
All on earth, kings or servants, will give thanks to God when they experience all of life as gift.
How It Works: The prayer of thanks starts out small, noticing something ordinarily taken for granted and insignificant. Let’s take the color red as an example. All of a sudden I notice the red in a rose or in a carpet or on a car. It jolts me out of my ordinary perception. I think how beautiful red really is and how it conjures up in my mind certain feelings- sexiness, blood, vitality, even rage. Then, I thank God for creating the color red. That is very specific. However, I start expanding my consciousness. What about the shades of red? They are all beautiful too. Thank you, God for the color red and for the shades of red. Well, what about the other colors and their shades? Yes, those too. Thank you God for those. And what about my eyes that can see these colors and shades of color? Yes, thank you, God, for my eyesight. And what about my other senses? Yes, those too. And on and on it goes, ever-expanding, non-ending. But, I have to stop somewhere. Next, I want to share this expanded consciousness of ordinarily ordinary reality or an aspect of it, so I go on a kind of private and unannounced mission. I want others to appreciate the color red- and its shades- and all colors- and eyesight- and the beauty of mixing colors in art and in life- etc. So, I mention to others how beautiful something is and, when they agree, I say something like “and thank God…” At that point I am where the psalmist is in his conscious prayer when he says, “All the kings of the earth will praise you, Lord.” When these others agree with me, say yes, say amen, I have helped them to pray also. Oh, they may not call it prayer, but they will not look at red the same way as they used to- for a while anyway. Nothing expands like gratitude.
Gift: We spend so much of our lives earning a living that we neglect to live. The only real way to live is to realize that life is a gift, not an accomplishment, given not earned. Now we can intellectually assent to the proposition that life is a gift. That in itself will do nothing for us, except maybe make us “theologically correct.” However, if we approach every tiny thing, every ordinary experience, every moment as a gift, an extension of the gift or a renewal of the gift, WOW! Every day is like Christmas! And we go around saying “Thank you” not only to God directly, but indirectly through our expression of gratitude to others. There is no gratitude unless there is awareness of a gift being given. To grow in being constantly aware of our lives as gifts, gifts constantly renewed, is to become full of gratitude and to become missionary in spreading this attitude of gratitude to all others. Then, our own prayers of gratitude, like this psalm, prayers offered directly, formally, vertically, to God are simply summaries of our moment-by-moment, informal, horizontal, spontaneous expression of gratitude for just about everything we can focus our attention upon. Formal prayer becomes a time to concentrate exclusively on God who gives us all these things and people as gifts, whereas daily life becomes the time when we focus on the gifts that God gives. The line between God and gifts is not really a line at all, but more where we focus the lens. When I focus on my life- and everything and everyone in it- as a gift, I actually live, live that life more gracefully, graciously and gratefully. I remain very much alive and I don’t succumb to ordinariness, routine, rut, boredom or ennui. Thus, even to give thanks is a gift from God, a gift to protect, me and you, from dying to life long before we physically die. Amen.
