Year C Third Sunday of Easter--April 29th, 2001. Psalm 30
Title: “Praising God is a ministry.”
This is a very old psalm whose origins are lost in antiquity. The Heading or Title attached to it “A Psalm. Dedication song for the house. Of David.” indicates as does the Talmud that it was used at the Feast of Hanukkah, the re-dedication of the Temple in 164 BC under the Macabees. Surely it is much older than that. It was sung in a cultic setting, a thank offering service, although there are no allusions to the sacrificial gift giving. Its terms and references are general enough to be appropriate for all kinds of situations and so is quite suitable for private prayer of thanksgiving. The psalmist speaks specifically of being rescued from a deadly illness. However, that had become a stock image for just about any serious life crisis, not necessarily limited to physical maladies. The psalmist now sings the praises of God, his deliverer, and invites the congregation to join him in his joy and, perhaps, to identify with this patterned process of God’s rescuing his faithful ones from the “pits” of life.
The structure of this psalm is typical of thanksgiving psalms; verses two to four, praise Yahweh, the rescuer; verses five and six, invite the other worshippers to join in; verses seven to thirteen, describe in more detail the reasons for the thankful praise and end with a resolution to praise Yahweh forever. This is classified as a song of thanksgiving, but since thanks is a specific form of praise, it is really impossible and unnecessary to distinguish between them. Praise and thanks amount to the same thing.
Verse two, I praise you, Lord, for you raise me up: The Hebrew word translated as “praise” here comes from the Hebrew root, rum, which means “rise up, be high.” The idea is that the presence of God “rises up” in the consciousness of a person and that person acknowledges this “heightened consciousness.” Praising God, then, is being in a state of altered and heightened consciousness. God is always present, but being aware of it prompts praise and thanks. The psalmist says the reason for this is his awareness that God has “raised me up.” The Hebrew word (d-l-h) used is the same as that used to draw a bucket up from a well or a pit. Thus, humans can exalt or extol God only by realizing that he is the source or cause of their own being raised up from the depths, pits, and Sheol.
“My enemies,” these are those who misinterpreted the psalmist’s illness or other misfortune, as a divine punishment for sin and who rejoiced that he had been “found out” or “drawn out,” exposed, “raised up” for public scrutiny.
In verse three, “you healed me,” generally speaking, the Israelites believed sin brought sickness and other grieves. Even though, strictly speaking, it was never actually taught that a person’s specific illness was caused by his or her own specific sin, it was easy to generalize and fall into that way of thinking. Many did, among them the psalmist’s “enemies.”
In verse four, “Sheol…pit,” The experience of illness or any other misfortune, is tantamount to being in Sheol, the netherworld or non-world, without God’s presence, the “pits,” a living hell, and so, healing can be described in terms of deliverance from hell, Sheol, the pits. Sheol here stands not so much for a geographical place as a state of mind- weakness, “Disease, misery, forsakenness.”
In verse five, “you faithful,” The Hebrew reads hasidiim, those who keep hesed, covenant loyalty. The psalmist is referring to those present in the liturgical assembly. Individual praising and thanking always must expand to first invite and then include others. One’s own praise and thanks are too inadequate to meet or match the beneficence of God.
In verse six, “divine anger lasts but a moment,” sin results in divine “anger.” One cannot be in sin and able to live in awareness of God’s presence. One is cut off. Weeping is the human reaction to that. If it causes repentance, then, like the temporary darkness, it is replaced by dawn and rejoicing, a change of fortune. Divine “anger” is short-lived and for the purpose of teaching the wayward. Compared to the extent of divine “favor” it is quite transitory.
In verses seven through nine, the psalmist reviews his own downfall. Using a “That was then, this is now” pattern, he admits to the sin of self-confidence or arrogance. While everything was going well, described as shalom, the psalmist thought it was because of his own achievements and forgot it was because of God. Praising himself, not God, he says to himself, “I shall not be shaken forever.” At the end of the psalm he will praise God forever. When God turned away, disaster struck and he was brought to his senses. In the pits, where self-confidence is shattered by awareness of mortality and finitude, he could only look up and ask to be “raised up” by the one at the other end of the bucket and rope.
In verses ten and eleven, his prayer to God shows Semitic humor. He pleads with God to spare his life because the dead do not praise God. Thus, his humorous reasoning goes, God would have one less “praiser” if the psalmist died. The implication is that God would suffer the loss of his praise more than he, the psalmist, would suffer the loss of life! Like most humor this point is based on a profound truth; God has given no promises to the dead and performs none of his great works in the land of forgetfulness, that is, Sheol.
In verses twelve and thirteen, “as evening weeping could be turned into morning joy, so the psalmist’s mourning turned into dancing and his penitential garb, of lament, into festive robes of praise. In other words, his former situation, by being recalled, recited and relived, increases his present joy commensurately. He is not grateful merely for physical health restored. Simply to return to that former state, without repentance, would open him up again to arrogance and self-confidence. Now, it is his “whole being” which is restored. Now, he will praise God instead of himself and will do so not just for this one “favor” and forget about it. No, he will praise him forever.
When we first read that the purpose of human life is to praise God it seems less than adequate. Humans should praise God, of course, but is that all? Cannot one do that and a lot more as well. And what kind of insecure God is this who needs to be praised so much that he created humans with that as their only function?
However, when we realize that praising God is a ministry, a way of life, and when we realize that everything meaningful in life and about life depends on our awareness of what underlies every experience of life, namely, God, then we begin to change. The purpose of life is to recognize, to be aware of, to acknowledge reality as it really is and not try to make it into something of our own designs, purposes, or preferences. As we ponder that we realize that all sin is a result of humans trying to be God. Praising God, never forgetting his hidden presence, always pointing him out to others, is a ministry. Yes, praising God is a ministry, one which everyone has. Indeed, everyone has a unique “take” on God. No two people experience God or reality in precisely the same way. Yet, for all the uniqueness there is a certain commonality as well. Thus the psalmist can praise and thank God individually and, then, communally. Individual’s can give praise, thanks, prayer, and worship is fine, but all this is inadequate to express the reality of God, who or which, is being addressed.
While no specific sin is mentioned in this psalm the singer recognizes his own sin as well as the common human one: self-confidence. There are so many instances in the Old Testament where a person or the people in general forgot about God when times are good (Cf. Dt 8: 10-18; Hos 13:6; Prv 30:9). During these times we humans are accustomed to congratulating ourselves for our powers, skills, energies and prowess. But sickness, bad luck, tragedy, etc. quickly shatters such illusions, especially that unworried trust in oneself. Then, we humbly pray to God. Unfortunately, when the crisis passes we return to our old conceits, unless, like this psalmist, we change and praise God rather than ourselves, not just at the time, but at all times, forever.
The “forever” attitude helps us become aware of what is missing in our lives when we “forget” to praise or pray. We notice immediately that we have fallen into the pit, out of awareness of God. And we know how to get back up- into the light, onto the heights. When we lose the “heightened awareness” our speech, our behavior changes from festivity, dancing, rejoicing, back into lamenting, mourning, sackcloth. Even that awareness is God’s doing. Thus we plead with him constantly to keep us as faithful as he himself is, and he does. He comes through always, forever. That’s God and we are grateful. And being grateful makes us be faithful. It all God and God’s doing. Whenever we are self-confident we know we have fallen out of his sphere and we need his help. We fall, we call, he comes, he raises us up, and we raise his name up for others to see and respond. Praising him is a ministry.
When we experience the “anger” side of life, even if it be truly God’s anger, it is experienced as a brief moment compared to the “gracious” side of life, by far the bigger, broader, longer side. Compared to the days, months, and years “forever” of God’s grace, the bad times are more like brief moments, easily forgotten in the exuberance of coming out of them by God’s “raising” us up from the pits, depth, darkness, confinement, living hell. This psalm of thanksgiving expresses not just the joy of the moment of emergence but the sustaining joy as we realize that moment can only be lost by our own forgetfulness of it. As we express it, remember it, recite it, we and those who experience us, relive it again and again, indeed forever. There is no remaining silent. We must preach. Praising God is a ministry.
Humans cannot bring themselves out of the “pits” on their own power or by willing it.
Praising God does nothing for God but reminds humans of God’s closeness.
Praising and thanking God are the same. Praising focuses on what God always does and thanking focuses on what God has done in the past, recent and remote.
Praising and thanking God constantly keeps the human memory green.
The Pits: This is a good translation for “Sheol,” that place of meaningless existence where Jews believed people went when they died. However, to us moderns, “the pits” stands for hell on earth. We all experience life as hell at times and some of us experience it that way for a long time, a few even for a lifetime. “The pits” expresses how we feel when we are disoriented from life. Ordinarily we are well disposed towards life. It is enjoyable. We are caught up in activities and in loving and it feels just fine. In fact, when we are well oriented towards life we are not inclined to stop and say to ourselves, “Hey, I’m really enjoying this.” We should, but we do not, unless we train ourselves. However, when we enter “the pits” and all that is withdrawn and the contrast between then and now is sharp, we realize painfully what we have lost and we miss it. Relatively minor things like headaches and sore feet or rather major ones like the loss of a loved one, a failed relationship or a catastrophe can throw us off course. Then, we read in this psalm that we are made for praising God. At first, it jolts us. We know that God is not so narcissistic that he needs to be constantly praised. So does the psalmist. But he has learned the lesson of being disoriented from life. He has learned how to become re-oriented. Praise God. Yes, praise God. If we are enclosed deep within a pit and the walls are closing in on us, what alternative do we have? Look up. Then, we see the sky. We see hope. We see a way out. We know we cannot get ourselves out, but we also know there is a way. So, we call for help. Praise of God does not seem, at first, to be a call for help. And for a very good reason. It is not primarily such a call. It is a deliberate change of subject. When we feel closed in we change the focus, the subject. We table the emotion .We do not deny the negative feeling or the pain; we simply refuse to let it dominate or predominate our consciousness. We turn to more pleasant thoughts, to God, how he created this world, me, you, everything and everybody, how he loves everything and everybody he created and so on. Sometimes the negative emotion and or pain goes away, sometimes not. Even when it does not, we are changed. We know there is more to life than our pain. We hope and we look for solutions. We do not desperately look for solutions. That would be control. No, we calmly look and hope and all the while rejoice that God is in charge and he will do what is good for everybody. Now, we are out of the pits. While we might still have the pain or emotion we find we can now function despite it. Praise does that. So, praise is practical after all, although it is not its primarily purpose, but a corollary effect.
Petition: Praise will get us through a lot of “pits” and we may not even have to move on to petition. However, if we must, praise has taught us how to ask and what to ask for. When we stop ourselves before rushing into petition and we praise, we find that if we don’t have to petition God after all, we do so in a wiser and calmer way. We ask not only to be relieved of pain or negative emotion, but for more. We ask to stay more conscious of God, to not fall into the pattern of taking him for granted, or taking our easy orientation to life for granted. Consciousness of God’s presence, which prompts praise and thanks, enhances our ordinary experiences of life, increases our enjoyment of the present moment and relaxes us to the point where many negative emotions and pains simply do not occur. And when they occur we are not always cast down into the pits by them, for we have been there before and know that the Lord is there too.
Keeping the Memory Green: People in recovery from addiction always remember where they were and how far they have come, how it was then and how it is now. They keep their memory green by constantly recalling and it keeps them grateful as well as sober, clean and serene. If it works for them, it should work for all of us. It also keeps us praising God forever. Amen.
