Spirituality of the Psalms

SPIRITUALITY OF THE PSALMS AND REINTIGRATING THEM INTO THE MODERN EVANGELICAL CHURCH by Dale S. Sanger SID400224475 Living and Learning from the Psalms OT 5XP5 Dr. Mark Boda October 22, 2020 1 Introduction When we look at the state of the North American evangelical church, we see a church that has a superficial spirituality that only allows for a triumphalism to be stated. It is expected for us to declare ourselves as Paul does in Romans 8:37 as being “more than conquerors.” What is missing however is the ability for us to cry out to God in anger, or to blame God for the problems in our lives. If we are unable or unwilling to cry out to God when we feel abandoned, then we have a shallow relationship with the Creator. Larrson-Miller says “Without real absence, real presence is distorted ... Real absence is first and foremost an eschatological reality and a theological necessity. But it is also an ethical recognition of the holiness of our Triune God and the distance from human sin to that perfection—which is wholeness in union with God.”1 Without the distance there can be no appreciation of the presence of God. This paper will discuss the usage or rather lack thereof, of the Psalms in the evangelical church in North America. In doing so it will briefly examine how the usage of the Psalter fell out of practice within evangelicalism. Next, it will look at the need to incorporate not only the Psalms of praise in our spirituality, but to include the Psalms which mirror the realities of every life, the brokenness, the pain, the joy, the gladness, and everything in between. Finally, it will touch upon the need to incorporate the usage of the actual Psalter into the life of the evangelical church so that its spirituality moves from shallowness into a deeper spiritual reality. . The Fading Usage of the Psalms in the Church The usage of the Psalms in the Christian tradition stems from the Jewish roots of the movement. Christians, like people in the Jewish faith, have historically viewed the Psalms as a place to 1 Larson-Miller, Sacramentality Renewed, 104–105. 2 gather their concepts of not only worship, but also various theological assertations including the nature of God, the coming of Messiah, and the relationship of Israel and all of mankind towards the Divine. The Christian therefore must do the work of praying the Psalms and letting our “voices and minds and hearts run back and forth in regular and speedy interplay between the stylized and sometimes too familiar words of Scripture and our experience which we sense with poignancy.”2 However, there has in the past two to three hundred years been a trend for the church to divorce itself from the usage of the Psalter in both its worship and as a source of theology. This has been an especially significant development within the evangelical church, where the Psalms have been set aside by many theologians, they no longer consider it as a place to find theology. In the liturgical landscape, the Psalter has been replaced by hymnody. This transition towards hymnody is highlighted especially within the story of Isaac Watts and William Romaine. This transition away from the Psalter and towards hymnody caused friction between Watts, the hymn writer, and Romaine, the Hebrew scholar. It was the latter who would hold the opinion that the Psalms were becoming neglected in many of the congregations of England and that the churches showed an unwarranted preference toward the hymns. Romain stated that “Human compositions are preferred to divine. Man's poetry is exalted above the poetry of the Holy Ghost. Is this right?”3 Perhaps that is the question the modern church must also ask itself. Without igniting a worship war of sorts, we must ask ourselves the question, “Has our usage of hymns and choruses, some of which have the theological depth of a thimble, instead of the Psalms and other poetic scriptures caused us to lose the breadth of our theology and in turn sacrificed an aspect of our spirituality in the process?” There is, therefore, a need within the evangelical church to 2 3 Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, 2. Waltke et al., The Psalms as Christian Worship, 79. 3 recapture the usage of the Psalms in its liturgy. This according to Helland and Hjalmarson will “ground us theologically in both triumph and trial.”4 That is not to say that evangelicals must adjust their form of worship to model itself after Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, or any of the other more liturgical expressions of worship. Evangelicals can still have the aspects of their worship that help define who they are, they simply must seek creative ways of incorporating the Psalter into their church life. This should not be to simply bring the joyful Psalms into the mix but to also include the Psalms of Lament as well. Doing this will cause the theological depth of the congregations to expand and lead to a more holistic relationship with Christ. Lament as Spiritual Practice The North American church, especially the Evangelical branches, have long lived in a false sense of triumph when it comes to their relationship with God. They have a problem expressing themselves to the Almighty unless it is in joy or in penitence. Yet some of the most profound Psalms are cries of distress and abandonment by the writers. They feel abandoned and they utter phrases like “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Ps. 13:1a ESV) They hurl accusatory cries towards God in what seems to be their darkest moments. In Psalm 42 they proclaim their desire for God to draw close to them as they accuse the Almighty of forgetting them in Psalm 42:9. This is not a Psalm that speaks of wanting more of God because they are already experiencing His goodness, it is a Psalm that says they need Him because there is an overwhelming sense of abandonment which they are experiencing. Elizabeth Liebert condones the practice of crying out against God and deems the act as an “implicit act of faith.”5 If the 4 5 Helland and Hjalmarson, Missional Spirituality, 120. Liebert, The Soul of Discernment, 94. 4 evangelicals are to see a greater depth in their spirituality they must incorporate these cries into their walk with God. North American Christians therefore should endeavour to open up to God in honesty about how they are feeling and stop trying to mask their true emotions from a God who knows all. We need to be able to come to God with the events that have triggered in us the deepest emotions and perhaps deep inappropriate cries. The cries of our souls must therefore be entrenched in our faith towards God. We must remember and relay these events. This remembering and relaying would be understood in modern psychotherapeutics as a person remembering a problematic reaction point (PRP).6 Remembering the PRP allows the complainant to understand where their emotions have prompted them to overreact. They first understand the stimulus for the reaction which caused them to act/react. Secondly, they understand that action/reaction may include behaviours or feelings or possibly both. Finally, the person comes to understand their reaction as being problematic.7 These three aspects can be seen in many of the laments by the psalmists. For example, if we look towards Psalm 74 we see all of these aspects. The reaction is to call out to God in an accusatory tone and find the stimulus for that reaction is shown in verses 1–11. God has forgotten them and the enemy is hounding them. The second step of the PRP is also found in the first few verses of the Psalm, they ask God why they are “cast off forever” and continue with a plea for God to remember them again. This is their emotion laid bare, open, and transparent. It is not emotion couched in gracefulness; it is the cry of an anguished heart. Finally, the psalmist sees that the reaction is being problematic, an overreaction and remembers instead the faithfulness of God. 6 7 Patton, From Ministry to Theology, 31. Patton, From Ministry to Theology, 31. 5 Strangely, our society is willing to vent to psychotherapists, politicians, doctors, pastors, the grocery clerk that bags your groceries, but we are unwilling to vent at God. Perhaps because we view it as a negative emotion, and perhaps it is but is being less than honest with God going to enhance our spiritual walk? While the PRP concept may not translate perfectly to the Psalms it does show us that these emotions and reactions we have are normal in these messy lives in which we live. Our lives are not perfect in any way, we all live in a moment of joy, then we are flung into a moment of pain. The joy moments are places where we find we are in a state of equilibrium. However, the moments of pain are those times where we are experiencing moments of disequilibrium. It is in those times that we cry out in anguish. In the Psalms of Lament, it is during those disequilibrium times that the psalmists realize that “life is not as it should be, and in these psalms the psalmists lament, protest, and call God to account.”8 We then need to learn to capture the ability to lament before God, to cry out when we think life is unfair when we think He may be unfair. That is not to say that our emotions are rational in any way. Is God to blame for our problems? Has the Most High somehow treated us in a manner that we did not deserve? The answers to these questions are complex but the short answer is “probably not.” If the inclusion of the Psalms of Lament in scripture tells us anything, it is that God wants us to be honest in our emotions with Him. We are going to have moments of what Walter Brueggemann calls orientation, disorientation, and new orientation.9 These phases are weaved into each life, it is something that Brueggemann calls the “movement of our life, if we are attentive, is the movement of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. And in our daily pilgrimage, we use 8 9 Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years, 269. Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms, 21. 6 much of our energy for this work.”10 If these are the movements of all our lives, then why do we as Christians in North America only feel that we can come to God during the times of orientation or reorientation (new orientation)? We only allow ourselves to come to God in the disorientation phase on the occasions of us being contrite for a sin that has been committed. We do not allow the anger that we feel to bubble into how we approach God, and yet even Christ on the cross cried out emotionally, albeit not in anger, to the Father. His plea from the cross was akin to the cries of the various psalmists who asked, “How Long?” We can not however remain in the accusatory tone; we must be willing to allow God to move us from the lament to the reorientation. The Christian then should modify their spiritual practices to include times of honest lament and to learn or perhaps relearn ways to incorporate the Psalms into their daily devotional life. The Psalms and especially the lament psalms are also useful in pastoral care and counselling. Pastoral care has been inundated with secular ideas and those ideas have replaced the theological roots of pastoral care.11 However, if we incorporate the Psalter back into our practice in pastoral care we will be able to re–establish the theology that has been abandoned. For in the psalms, especially those of lament, we can help people through the grief process and free them from “obtrusive pious expectations and allow them to be angry with God.”12 If we bottle in this anger then we may not move to the next phase of returning to the worship of the Almighty. As we discover in the lament psalms, the discordant petitioner eventually returns to the place of praise. Praise then should be the natural ending point for all healthy grief and 10 Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, 24. Ballard, “The Use of Scripture,” 165. 12 Ballard, “The Use of Scripture,” 166. 11 7 lament, that is not to say that lament and grief ever fully subside but that we adjust and reorient in our grief as “praising God is where despair and depression need to turn.”13 Psalms and the Life of the Church It is not enough to use solely the Psalms as a place for pastoral counselling or personal devotion. The Psalms should be reincorporated into the life of the evangelical church in North America, for in its pages there is a wealth of practical spirituality and deep theological concepts that can be incorporated into both the individual lives and corporate lives of believers. The Psalter should not be viewed as just another book contained in the scriptures, but it should be viewed as containing transformative qualities as we read and incorporate it into church life and praxis. The Psalter will help the believer to discover the patterns and purposes of their lives. The Psalms are rich with the concepts of waiting on God to discover these things.14 When we look to the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer we see that when it comes to the corporate life of the church, he believed that praying of the Psalms could make the church the embodiment of Christ and that when the Psalter is used it is Christ praying through His church.15 It is in this process that the Spirit of God enlivens the person to make them more in the imago Dei. Through this, the Christian can experience God not through their efforts but the efforts of the Godhead alone. Jeanne Guyon explains this process as the moment the Christian ceases from “self–action and self–exerting in attempting to experience His presence. God Himself can act alone.”16 Usage of the Psalter in this process aligns the entirety of the person to the Spirit of God. It is during the moments of alignment where the individual and the corporate body can discern Brown and Schweitzer, “Psalms as Resources for Pastoral Care.” 5. Nouwen, Discernment, 151. 15 Bonhoeffer et al., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 5:55. 16 Guyon, Experiencing God through Prayer, 45. 13 14 8 the will of God. The usage of the Psalms should move us to rediscover some ancient spiritual traditions of the church. Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline highlights several practices that the Christians should endeavour to recapture in their spiritual walks. He legitimatizes those disciplines by emphasizing their practice in the Psalms.17 The evangelical then should enter back into practices of meditation, of fasting, of solitude, of simplicity, and others as seen in the Psalms, so that our spirituality is strengthened in the process. We do these practices not by simply recounting the good times and entering into praises filled with joy, but by being spiritual while allowing the discontent to flood over us, and our tears to be poured out towards God. These tears are akin to the drink offering poured out in Levitical laws. While in Leviticus the drink offerings are a foreshadow of the blood of Christ, when we cry our tears, we are pouring out ourselves before Him. We are allowed to feel the good and the bad of life, and we are permitted to share both with our Father in heaven. We do this because he is like the shepherd found in Psalm 23 who experiences the harsh climates as well as the good climates as the sheep are led. If we as the sheep are led along by the Good Shepherd, we become aware of His presence when we are by the still waters. We experience Him leading when we are facing the shadow of death. It is a successful Christian who can “Live ever aware of God’s presence”18 regardless of what is surrounding us. Conclusion Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction details for his readers the usage of the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120–134) for the biblical Israelites who would be journeying 17 18 Foster, Celebration of Discipline. Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, 142. 9 forward toward Jerusalem to celebrate the festivals to the Lord. While they were ascending in altitude towards the heights of the Holy City, they would speak out each of these Psalms in order.19 As they were read they would declare what we have already discovered Brueggemann would call “orientation, disorientation, and reorientation.”20 That is an important distinction to make because as they were travelling to the Most High place they were willing to at least read about times where people felt far from God and needed to get back to the place where they could meet with Him. If these Psalms are of any indication on how the spiritual life of the believer should be, then we too must integrate the Psalms back into our personal and communal lives as the church. And in doing this we must make sure that we allow for the hopeful and hopeless emotions to be shared with God. 19 20 Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 12. Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, 24. 10 Bibliography Ballard, Paul. “The Use of Scripture.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore and Wiley-Blackwell (Firm), 163–172. WileyBlackwell Companions to Religion. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, et al. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. First English-Language edition with new supplementary material. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. Brown, William P., and Carol L. Schnabl Schweitzer. “Psalms as Resources for Pastoral Care.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, edited by William P. Brown, 14. 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