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Jesus knew the Psalms. Paul knew the Psalms.
In fact, the entire early Christian community was steeped in the same Psalms that have served as the central prayer and hymnbook for the church since its beginning-until now.
Reading, studying, and praying the Psalms is God’s means for teaching us what it means to be human: how to express our emotions and yearnings, how to reconcile our anger and our compassion, how to see our story in light of God’s sweeping narrative of salvation. Our intent this summer is to help provide the tools for understanding and incorporating these crucial verses into our own lives by exploring 10 hymns from the books of the Psalms.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Anyway, welcome today. My name is Jeremy. I'm one of the people who hang out here. Today, we are starting a new series, and this is the series that is going to take us through to next year's journal project, which we are hard at work on right now. If you happen to be new to the community and you haven't picked up a copy of the journal, we do still have some left on the book table.
Speaker 1:We've done a third printing, and they are completely free for you. And even though this is the last series in that journal, it will still give you information about who we are here and what we do at Commons. So feel free, stop by the book table after the service, grab one for yourself. Before we say anything else though, I wanna remind you that our team traveling to Kalende, Zambia to represent us in Africa has left on Friday on Canada Day. They will be in country for the next three weeks working alongside and learning from the local care workers that live and work in the community to look after the orphans and vulnerable children that are there.
Speaker 1:Now for those of us who do support, we posted an update from Hands at Work on our website, commons.church/news. If you wanna check that out, they send those to us regularly. And for those of us who have ever thought about it, you're interested in perhaps supporting a child, there's information about that on the website. You can always email donate@commons.church as well. I promise you, $20 a month will be the best investment you make.
Speaker 1:Hands at Work is this incredible organization working locally with local solutions and local leadership. And we are so privileged that we get to come alongside them and participate in what they do. Now that said, last week, we also wrapped up a series called Ritual, where we looked at some of the traditions of the church. We talked about singing and prayer and confession. And then last week, we shifted gears a little bit to talk about spiritual gifts.
Speaker 1:And what I really wanted to get at in our conversation last week was the fact that Paul addresses specific, quote, unquote, spiritual gifts out of an imagination that accompanies everything we have been gifted. So for Paul, the way that he chooses to address particular manifestations in a church like Corinth actually flows from his imagination of church as a generative community in the model of the Trinity. And so whether we are talking about public speaking, or teaching, or singing, or prophecy, or carpentry, or accounting, or management, or finances. It is the image of the triune God, giving and receiving, speaking and listening, leading and following together that is our model for community. May you know that whatever you do, whatever you have to offer, whether that is at home, with your kids, here in this church, or at work on Monday morning, This is your spiritual ritual.
Speaker 1:So don't imagine it for anything less than it is. Today, however, we are about to enter a new series. And this series is all about the Psalms, and there are 150 Psalms in our Bible, but there are only ten weeks in this series. So sadly, we are not going to cover them all. But we have chosen 10 Psalms that we think will help to give us a fairly well rounded experience of the different emotions and topics and perspectives that these poems bring to our attention.
Speaker 1:As John Calvin said, the psalms are an anatomy of all parts of the soul, which is actually, I think, a great encapsulation of what these Psalms are all about. They are full of theology. They are beautiful poetry. They mix language and metaphor and creativity together in ways that have helped them retain their impact across different cultures and translations, and let's be honest, sometimes some pretty bad translations. But I think perhaps what has helped the Psalms endure for so long is their essential human character.
Speaker 1:We get joy and pain, and laughter and tears. We get anger and frustration, not just at circumstances, but sometimes at God himself. And we get people wrestling with whether they can forgive God, whether they can trust him again after he seems to have let them down. We get people in desperate situations where all they have is trust in God, where they have no choice but to rely on his grace. And I think that seeing that, I think that realizing that the tradition of the people of God has been not to suppress, but actually, in some sense, to celebrate our inability to completely comprehend the divine.
Speaker 1:This is what continues to resonate as we read the Psalms today. Now today, we're gonna look at Psalm 46. But I wanna give you at least a little bit of background before we jump in. Because the word psalm or sometimes psalter comes from the Greek psalmos, which is the translation of the Hebrew mizmur. And all of that essentially just means song.
Speaker 1:And that's what these are. They are the ancient worship songs of the Hebrew peoples. And so just as we talked about singing in our last series and why we do it, all of that applies to all of these. Remember, everything we will read this summer was sung together in worship. And so it's helpful to keep that in mind as we read.
Speaker 1:These are songs, not sermons. And so the way they play with rhythm and language and image reflects that as we read, we are looking for poetry here, not precision. Now these songs were written all across the Old Testament period, and so they come from different eras and situations. In fact, they even represent different stages in the Hebrew language. And so unless the psalm identifies a very specific situation, can be very difficult to date them with any precision.
Speaker 1:In fact, one third of the psalms are anonymous anyway. And even the ones that do have names, sometimes that gets a little tricky. First of all, the Hebrew four written by x and written for x look exactly the same. And so some scholars debate which we should read in English when we read the titles. In addition to that, the manuscript our English Bibles are based on is what's called the Masoretic text for the Hebrew scriptures.
Speaker 1:But that copy, which does include 100 of the 150 Psalms authors, comes from the year 1008 of the common era. So it's only about a thousand years old. When we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in the middle of the twentieth century, those were almost 2,000 year old copies. A lot of those didn't have the names of the Psalms. And so at least some of these identifiers seem to have been added at a later point.
Speaker 1:And remember here, this is a very different culture. I know we love a mystery. We wanna know exactly who wrote it and when they wrote it. But just imagine trying to listen to a song on the radio today and not immediately being able to pull out Shazam and find out who sung it. It just didn't work in ancient Hebrew.
Speaker 1:By the way, our relationship to music today is incredible, but it's also a little bit strange. I am old enough to remember waiting by the radio with a blank tape in my cassette recorder trying to tape my favorite songs off the radio. The worst thing was when the DJ would talk over the start of the song, and I was convinced they always did that on purpose. I hated that. Anyway, these days, we want all of our music on our in our pocket to carry it with us.
Speaker 1:Even then, once we had iPods, we were like, hey, I already have to carry a phone. Steve Jobs, can you do something about this? This is absurd. I don't want a phone and an iPod all at the same time. And Apple moved all our music onto our phones, and we were like, no, I don't want my music.
Speaker 1:I want all the music. All the time. Whenever I want it. I never want to be without the ability to listen to Pearl Jam, and then Backstreet Boys, and then Amy Grant back to back to back. It's a good playlist by the way.
Speaker 1:But that kind of on demand celebrity just wasn't the norm in these ancient cultures. At least partly because they didn't have iPhones, but also largely because these songs belonged not so much to their authors, but to the community. And so when it comes to the Psalms this summer, sometimes part of their beauty is their anonymity. That these poems have been collected and preserved and gathered that they don't belong to anyone anymore. They belong to all of us.
Speaker 1:And so, yes, we will do our work this summer to uncover the context that helps us understand what's being said. But as much as possible, what I would encourage is that you try to read as if you were speaking this summer. Try to imagine these songs not just in your mouth, but is there coming from your heart and your imagination. Because ultimately, this is what the Psalms are for. They give voice to the feelings we sometimes don't notice for ourselves.
Speaker 1:And so as we read this summer, may the Psalms become your voice. May they come from somewhere deep inside of you. And with that in mind, let's read Psalm 46. For the director of music, of the sons of Korah, according to Alamoth, a song. God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble.
Speaker 1:Therefore, we will not fear. Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging, There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place for the most high dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at break of day.
Speaker 1:Nations are in uproar. Kingdoms fall. He lifts his voice. The earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us.
Speaker 1:The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire.
Speaker 1:He says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God of song and singing, God of poetry and praise, would we learn to make the Psalms of your scriptures ours today? Would they become our words? Would they give voice to our fears? Would they express our joy, and would they invite us more closely into your presence?
Speaker 1:Now even as we read language that is sometimes unfamiliar to us, We pray that your spirit would be present in our conversations this summer, that you might help us to find ourselves somewhere in these songs. We know that at times. Our wills are weak, and we need your power. Our spirit's dry, and we need to be refreshed. Our minds dulled and in need of wisdom, sometimes our body in pain and in need of healing.
Speaker 1:God, if our emotions are bruised, would we recognize that we need your comfort? And may we come to find each of these moments met and renewed as we engage with the poetry of your people. Speak life and truth and remind us that beauty can indeed change the world. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Alright. Psalm 46. Now if you're paying close attention as I read, you may have noticed a familiar trope in this Psalm, the refrain, or what we might call a chorus today. So verse seven. The Lord Almighty is with us.
Speaker 1:The God of Jacob is our fortress. And then again in verse 11, the Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. And this helps us to see the structure of this song. In fact, there are actually three stanzas in here.
Speaker 1:Verse one to three, which focus on God himself. Verses four to seven, which end with the refrain and focus on the city of God. And then finally, verses eight to 11, which end with the refrain again, but this time it focuses on the work of God. And this is where we could get, if we wanted, into a very technical discussion about the rhythm and timing and breathing notes of the Hebrew text. Think back to learning iambic pentameter in high school when you talked about Shakespeare.
Speaker 1:But the simple fact is that it's almost impossible to translate into English, and to be honest, that type of mastery of ancient Hebrew is well above my pay grade. So suffice to say that these words here have been chosen very delicately, not just to communicate meaning, but to fit within a rhythm and a pattern. This is a song. And like all good poetry, there's a flow that you get into that invites you to keep going. English translators have done their best to mimic that.
Speaker 1:So let's walk our way through this poem and talk about some of the things that we notice as we go. Stanza one. Our God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. Though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging, and that sounds beautiful.
Speaker 1:Right? But this is actually a pretty terrifying opening sequence. I mean, yes, it starts with a statement that God is our refuge and strength. He is ever present. But the reason he needs to be present here is essentially the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Now the earth give way and mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and mountains quake with their surging. This is not good times. In fact, one of the things that we have to understand here is that mountains falling back into the sea. This is an ancient idiomatic way of talking about the end of the world. In fact, make a note of this.
Speaker 1:Anytime you see the sea in the Psalms this summer, think Tiamat. Now what is a Tiamat? Well, Tiamat is a Babylonian god. And in one of the foundational Babylonian myths called the Anuma Elish, the god Marduk gets into a fight and kills his grandmother Tiamat, creating dry land for humanity. See, Tiamat is the sea.
Speaker 1:Now she's described in all kinds of different ways in these myths. A snake, a dragon, a storm, but what she represents is the chaos of water. So it's actually Marduk in Babylonian who's able to defeat her, and he uses her body to create dry land for humans to live on. And you can imagine, in ancient primitive cultures, water was a very scary thing. So the sea, the ocean, even torrential rains and flooding, this was a force that was beyond your ability to predict or control or tame.
Speaker 1:It was chaotic and unpredictable. It could wipe out everything that you had built without warning, and yet water was also something that you needed to live. And so water became, in almost every ancient culture, a symbol of chaos. And the gods who were associated with the water were generally not the gods that you wanted to mess with. This is the world that the ancient Hebrews inhabit.
Speaker 1:Now the Hebrews are monotheists. So they don't acknowledge all these other gods at all, only Yahweh. But they do know the stories of the Babylonians. They were taken captive and lived in Babylon for centuries after all. They are very aware, however, of the same forces of chaos and water in their world.
Speaker 1:So they may not personify water the way that the Babylonians do, but water very much represents the same threats to them. Think of Genesis one. The earth was formless and void. Darkness was over the surface, and the spirit of God hovered over the waters. So it's God that brings life and land and order out of the chaos of primordial water.
Speaker 1:Try to think about this from an ancient perspective. If you dig down deep enough, what do you get? Water. That's what's below you. And if you wait long enough, what falls on top of you?
Speaker 1:Water. That's what's above you. Water seems to be the natural state of the universe. And you, you are only here because God has created a safe, dry place for you, a fragile plot of land for you to stand on. Well, here, the writer says that though the earth give way and the mountains fall back into the sea, I will still find refuge in God.
Speaker 1:For an ancient audience, this is not lightweight stuff. This is about saying that if the entire world fell apart, if the Babylonians were right and Tiamat returned, I would still trust only in Yahweh. That's kind of hard for us to get our heads around. I mean, we may not be geologists, but we all have a basic understanding of tectonic plates and sedimentary rock. We understand that we are not living at the mercy of the oceans overrunning us.
Speaker 1:Although if we keep going with anthropogenic climate change, we might make all those Hebrew fears come true. But what would it look like for your world to fall apart? Would it look like the stock market, not dropping or diving, but fundamentally collapsing? Would it look like a certain politician actually getting his hands on nuclear codes? Would it look like your house, your neighborhood, or your city being burnt down in a forest fire, or civil war, or religious genocide?
Speaker 1:Our cosmology might not be as fragile as the Hebrews. I'm not sure our worlds are actually any more stable. And I'm not saying that we should all go around with tinfoil hats wondering about when the world will end, But there are things that we place our trust in implicitly without even considering them. And so what I'm suggesting is that sometimes when we say we trust in God, what we really mean is we trust in the status quo. Part of what the writer here is asking is what if all of the things that you don't think you need to think about, all of a sudden became things you did, would you still trust God?
Speaker 1:Could you trust God if God didn't look like a stable government and a good job and a long healthy life? That's a big question. Though chaos roar and foam and solid ground quake, stanza two begins, but there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. That's an interesting transition because the writer pulls us in one direction, and then just when we're starting to get worried, he pulls a one eighty on us and yanks us the other way. So water as the sea overtaking mountains, this is chaos and destruction.
Speaker 1:That's where he starts. But water as a river feeding into the city of God, this is Yahweh's generosity and care and benevolence, and this is where he takes us. Now, certainly, I think we know the difference between a raging sea and a tranquil river. One, dangerous. The other, life giving.
Speaker 1:But it's not a coincidence that the writer has pulled these two images of water together. Remember, this is poetry. As you read this summer, if these types of connections jump out at you, chances are they have at others as well. Make note of them. And in fact, this is a theme that we see all throughout the Hebrew scriptures.
Speaker 1:Water unconstrained and raging is chaos. Water controlled, properly directed. Water calmed and purposefully used. This is life. I would bet that almost everyone here has a story you could tell about that type of a paradox in your life.
Speaker 1:At some way, the stress or adversity ended up somehow becoming life giving for you, helped you grow, or it gave you new opportunities, stretched you in ways you might not have otherwise imagined you could have been stretched. Sometimes a bit of the thing that might overwhelm you is actually what transforms you. Now I don't wanna minimize that either. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes that's okay to say after the fact.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's very hard to hear that during the struggle. And yet perhaps that storm that you sense and that water that's raging in your life, perhaps there could be a sense of God's river. His guiding and grace in the midst of it in some way. Distress and opportunity are often made of the same stuff. There is, of course, another way to think of this as well.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes the river that we enjoy could turn out to be the sea if we're not careful. For example, I would love it if God were to decide that the river of my paycheck should turn into the sea of my lottery winnings. And I know it might be bumpy, but I would find a way to float. God, you can trust me with this one. Except that maybe he can't.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes the limits and the barriers and the boundaries that we struggle with, sometimes maybe they're actually meant for our good. I remember thinking as a younger pastor in my twenties that I had a whole lot more to offer than the opportunities I was being given. But to be fair, I think everyone in their twenties believes that. This is part of being in your twenties. Right?
Speaker 1:However, part of what I realize now is that I didn't. I had exactly as much to offer as the opportunities I was given. And that didn't mean that I didn't have potential. It didn't mean there wasn't more ahead of me in life. It just meant that I had stuff to learn and experiences to collect and at least a little wisdom to gather before moving forward.
Speaker 1:And so sometimes paying your dues is not just about putting in your time. It's about learning what you don't know you need to know. And so if the river seems a little bit too safe for you right now, then push yourself. Challenge yourself and look for new opportunities and then jump when they come along. Just remember that sometimes the same water that seemed too safe can be pretty scary if you get in too deep.
Speaker 1:And it's okay if you need to be rescued at some point. We all do. That's why God is there. And the Hebrews, they had this profound sense that water was both life and danger all at once. And they translated that into their imagination of God.
Speaker 1:God was life. He was safety, but God was also a little bit dangerous. Makes me think of Narnia. Right? That moment where CS Lua writes about the character Susan meeting Aslan, the lion who represents God.
Speaker 1:And she finds out that Aslan is actually a lion. Oh, said Susan, I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I should feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. Safe, said mister Beaver.
Speaker 1:Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn't safe. He's a lion. But he's good, I tell you. And perhaps, we would do well to remember that paradox in our God.
Speaker 1:Because the final stanza begins. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire.
Speaker 1:He says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Speaker 1:And so here, we get one final spin on this struggle the writer has been exploring. Verse eight. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolation he has brought. Verse nine, he makes war cease. And it's interesting because verse seven is the refrain, and that tells us thematically we are entering a new thought here.
Speaker 1:That means that at least in some sense, verse eight and nine are part of the same thought. In some way, the desolation that God has brought is the broken bows and shattered spears, the burnt shields that make war cease on the earth. So this word desolations, Shema in Hebrew, These translate as events that cause astonishment. And yes, it's generally seen as a negative. And most of the time it's in the Bible, it is used in a negative way.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't necessarily carry that connotation. And so I wonder if perhaps part of the poetic intent here isn't to pull that tension out in us. I mean, what if God ever did actually show up and break the bows and shatter the spheres? He burnt all the shields and put an end to war on the earth. I mean, it would be astonishing, but for many, it would also be desolation.
Speaker 1:See, in the times of the ancient Hebrews, just as today, there were many who made a profit off of misery and war. In fact, first Kings talks about how the newly formed nation of Israel slid slowly away from God as they became rich selling weapons of war to their neighbors. Alright. Just read first Kings chapter 10. And the list of all the chariots and weapons and horses that Israel was exporting.
Speaker 1:And then notice verse 14 in that chapter where the writer says that the weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly from these exports was 666 talents. It's a very Jewish way of saying something is wrong here. So something's out of order. There's a way things that are supposed to be, and this isn't it. Well, what if God made right that wrong?
Speaker 1:What what if God had canceled the contract? What if he had stopped the exports? What if all that gold had stopped flowing into Israel? That might seem like desolation. And sometimes, these are questions that we're afraid to ask of ourselves.
Speaker 1:And so we go back to the start of the poem, and we read that God is our refuge and our strength and ever present help. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the sea. We will trust God even if our world is turned upside down. So here's the question that this song is presenting us. What if God's strength meant he pulled the rug out from under your job?
Speaker 1:What if God's refuge meant he needed to destabilize your security for a season? What what if the plan for peace looked like God taking everything you depend on and tossing it into the ocean? And sure, it was leading to a good place, but it meant the end of war. But what if it meant that God burnt your shield and he broke your bow in the process? Everything you use to protect yourself, everything you use to attack others, he took it all away.
Speaker 1:Would God still feel like refuge and strength? That's what the psalmist is asking us to consider. And sometimes, if I'm honest, I'm not sure I'm ready to answer that question. And yet, I know that for God to change the world, it means he needs to change me too. Even if that means that, like, my world just fell into sea.
Speaker 1:May you find the place where you can be still long enough to know that God is God, and to trust that even when it's scary, he still has your best in his mind. That sometimes even what seems like desolation, like everything being turned upside down and thrown in the ocean, this is meant for your peace, and that God could be your refuge and strength in the midst of that transformation. Let's pray. God, help us as we begin these conversations this summer to engage with the poetry of your people, the ways that we have wrestled with what it means to come close to you, to trust you, to find refuge and strength in you, to believe that you are ever present help. And yet to trust so deeply that when you break our bows and you shatter our spears, when you take our shields away, when everything gets tossed up in the air and into the ocean and we feel adrift, we are still ready to trust you.
Speaker 1:God, may we have the courage to look at our lives and see what needs to change. May we be open enough to your spirit to hear your voice speaking to us about what needs to be let go of. Would we be confident enough in the path of your son that we would walk and we would follow in the confidence of the fact that you are leading us to what is good? In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Now, next Sunday, we won't be having services in the morning. The road will be blocked off, and there will be a ton of free food here. So please invite everyone you know to join us, for the Stampede breakfast next Sunday. If you are just dying for a Psalm next Sunday, we will be having church here at 7PM as well, and so you're welcome to join us for that as well. But we will end as we always do with this.
Speaker 1:Love God. Love people. Tell the story. If you don't have plans after church, maybe invite somebody out, get to know a bit of their story as well. Have a great Sunday.
Speaker 1:We'll see you for Stampede Breakfast next Sunday. Thanks, everyone.