Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts,
be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
This evening we come to the last of this year’s Lent sermon series on the psalms and our focus is on Psalm 19. But before looking at this psalm let’s recollect the four previous sermons in this series.
Jerry began by looking at Psalm 116 – and especially the verses that have become significant to him as prayers of offering and thanksgiving said privately and quietly by the priest during the preparation the Eucharist.
Paul, by contrast, took Psalm 150 – a psalm of praise and rejoicing to be proclaimed by the whole congregation as loudly as possible. Remember his challenge to us to be a little more vibrant in our worship!
Ally focused on some verses from Psalm 119 – that enormously long psalm that dwells on the Law and statutes. She suggested a connection with these verses and the words of Jesus, ‘I am the way, the truth and the light’. In Jesus we find a fulfilment of Old Testament law.
I missed last Sunday, when David chose to look at Psalm 139, but I think his focus was on the miracle of God’s purpose in our lives, even when we are in our mother’s womb. He showed those amazing photographs of a new human life beginning and brought to life the words of this psalm, ‘you formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.’
I wanted to begin by recollecting the essence of each of these sermons because they indicate how rich and varied the psalms are – how, perhaps through the power of their poetry, the psalms often reach into the depths of our being in quite unique ways – how they touch and speak to every aspect of our lives.
Also there’s a way in which each of the psalms we’ve looked at so far introduces and connects with my own chosen psalm – Psalm 19. I chose it because here, in the 15 verses of this psalm, is embodied all that is most valuable in the Book of Psalms as a whole. Here is praise and wonder, law and statutes, personal prayer and confession, and powerful liturgical prayer – all gathered into the one psalm.
Or is it one psalm? It’s quite likely that at one time it was two separate hymns that were brought together into one. The first six verses are actually quite different in tone and content to the remainder of the psalm and probably very much older.
If Psalm 139 wonders at the minute detail of God’s creation, these verses wonder at the grand scale of the heavens, where once again nothing is hid. The glory of God, revealed in the heavens, displayed in the earth, cannot be kept silent. Creation itself, unable to speak with words, nevertheless resounds with the praise of its creator. As in Psalm 150, everything praises the Lord. In nature the psalmist sees a vast silent hymn to the glory of God. The natural laws of the world we live in themselves reveal the organising presence and activity of God. Praise rings out all around us.
It’s almost as if the endless repetition and the extraordinary length of the psalm are an embodiment of “the medium is the message” – this is a psalm that demands to be woven into the fabric of our lives.
Then suddenly we move into law and testimony, statutes and commandment, fear and judgement.
I love the strong rhythm of verses 7, 8 and 9 – it gives the words a confidence and power of their own. The psalms are full of rhythms, patterns and repetitions, but I’m particularly fond of the pattern of these three verses. On holiday in Assisi some years ago, I heard these verses read in Italian and the rhythm was still unmistakably there, even if I couldn’t understand the Italian words.
If God is revealed in the natural world, that revelation is amplified and made complete by the law. It is the law and the statutes that, understood properly, draw us closer to God, as we discovered two weeks ago in Psalm 119. The law converts the soul and gives wisdom; it rejoices the heart and gives light to the eyes. It is not there simply to condemn or find wanting, but to encourage and reveal. The law is a gateway to deeper understanding of God; a doorway to truth and righteousness. Therefore, as verse 10 tells us, the law and the judgement of God are more to be desired than gold and sweeter than honey. This is the psalmist’s experience, as he explains in the next verse. The law has taught him about God and about faith, and keeping the law is full of benefits.
Amongst the benefits is a recognition that we are fallible and make mistakes, that we sometimes unwittingly hurt others, that at times our feelings and thoughts get the better of us and lead us to act or speak in ways that are hurtful to others. To encounter God – in the natural world and through the law – is to become aware of our own littleness and vulnerability – not in a grovelling, beat-yourself-up, belittling sort of way, but rather in a way that increases our dependence on the guiding light of God’s grace and mercy and on his unceasing love for us. The psalmist seeks God’s forgiveness not only for the things he knows he’s done wrong, but also for the things that he’s unaware of. He wants nothing to hinder or impede his relation with God.
That brings us to the final prayer of this psalm – and, like the prayers of Psalm 116 that have become so important to Jerry – this prayer is important to me in my own understanding of my ministry as a Reader. It’s a prayer that I often say aloud at Evensong before beginning the sermon, as I did this evening, and for me it sums up what I’m trying to do. I’m asking that my words may speak to others of God and his infinite love. I adapt the psalm slightly to say ‘the meditation of all our hearts’ (not just mine) because it seems to me that God speaks not simply through what I may say, but rather through the interaction of what I say with what you are thinking. A sermon needs to resonate with the hearts of those who listen. There is no way I can know what is in your heart as I prepare a sermon – God alone knows, and that leaves me dependent on God in a very real sense as I meditate and write. That is why the conclusion of this psalm is so central to my understanding of a preaching ministry, and why this psalm has become a favourite of mine.
The Book of Psalms is an absolute treasure trove of poetic faith and inspiration and covers every form of human emotion from the heights of praise and elation to the depths of despair and desolation.
The psalmists do not shirk from expressing anger, jealousy, hatred, and suffering, and somehow it is through their frank expression of raw human emotion that we are led to the integrity of faith in God that is so central to the psalms. All of life is to be found here – the secret is not so much to read the psalms with our thinking brain, as to experience them with our feeling heart and thus discover their wisdom.
Amen