Psalm 150.
Last Monday morning, I was up at about 4:00 AM. It’s one of the
symptoms of aging. At any rate, as I was returning to bed, I
stopped and looked out of the window. It was stunning. There above the
trees the stars seemed to hang in space like magnificently wired
lights. Seldom, do I remember seeing them so bright and seemingly so
close. It was a moment of spiritual wonder. As I lay there in
bed, still awed by the spectacle, I thought of Psalm 150: “Praise the
Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary, Praise him in his mighty firmament.”
For people who have spiritual sensitivity, there is something about the
heavens at night that draws adoration and awe out of us. The
sheer immensity of the universe and the predictability of the stars,
planets comets and their interactions arouses a desire to worship. I
hear people say that they do not have enough faith to believe in a
universal spirit. I say if a person can believe that all that is
in the sky and all that astronomers can predict with accuracy just
happened by chance, then that person truly has faith, a lot more than I
have.
Some years ago, there was a man in Los Angeles who spoke to a
gathering. He said that one of the things his company manufactured was
a simple meat grinder. It consisted of several parts which when
assembled made a useable hand cranked meat grinder. Now, if we were to
take those 10 or 11 parts and place them unassembled in a washing
machine that would tumble them, how long do you suppose they would have
to tumble about before they formed themselves into a perfectly
operating meat grinder? Yet, friends, that example is ridiculously
simple compared to the immensity of the universe and its predictable
functions. We never question that the sun will rise and set each
day. It seldom occurs to us that at this very moment we are kept,
comfortably, on this earth by a gravitational force while the earth is
spinning at a rapid rate, and that this rotation is what causes us to
see what we call a sunrise and a sunset. Well, we could go on and on,
but you get the point. It takes more faith to believe I happened by
chance, I think, than to believe in an eternal Being who started the
process and directs the evolutionary flow of all that is.
To me, one of the wonderful aspects of the Bible is that it answers the
question of "how" with stories. The technical term is myth, and a myth
is a story that serves to unfold part of the world- view of people, or
explain a practice, belief or tradition. A myth is a vehicle that
carries a truth. It is a wonderful way of conveying something eternal
and true in terms that listeners can grasp. When the Jewish
children sat around a campfire at night and asked, where did all of
this world including themselves come from, the elders told them a
story. They said, In the beginning God- and then they told the story of
creation. They told it from their shared knowledge, because the
Biblical story is remarkably similar to the creation myth of the
Zoroastrians. There was never any attempt for this story to be a
factual scientific account. Instead, this is a story that properly
places the beginning in the hands of that universal reality we call God
and follows along until humans are here and messing up. It never
happened as it is written or in seven days, but the story is true. The
appropriate question to be asked of the Bible stories is never how did
it happen, but rather, what does it mean?
The early Church had no problem at all with the Bible as myth and
metaphor. That is how people talk, write and think in the Middle East.
It was the western logic of the middle ages in middle Europe that
changed the emphasis of the Bible. So, the Psalmist had no trouble at
all in calling for all kinds of objects to join together in praising
God. During the dedication of the organ, we read responsively the
150th Psalm. It begins, “Praise God in his sanctuary”-that is not
a reference to a room like the one which we call a sanctuary. The
Hebrew word here is “rekia.” It means the expanse of
heaven. Praise God in the expanse of heaven; praise him in his
mighty firmament. Praise him for his mighty deeds. (Remember that the
Hebrews believed God had delivered their people from slavery in Egypt,
and had led them, albeit over 40 years, to a land of their own. It was
natural for them to praise God for his mighty deeds.
Praise God for his exceeding greatness. Metaphorically speaking, the
blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk; that’s great stuff, and a
dramatic way of expressing change. We praise God because once we were
blind to the reality of his truth but now we see. We see, through the
eyes of faith, that while we do not know the future, we know who holds
the future. So we work and we pray, and we praise that reality
which is greater than we are and to whom we pledge our faith and
allegiance.
Praise Him with trumpet sound! Praise Him with the lute and harp!
Praise Him with the timbrel {which is a small drum or tambourine);
praise him with the timbrel and dance and dance! Praise him with
strings and Pipe!
Praise Him with sounding cymbals praise him with loud crashing cymbals!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
This is the complete package. Let everything that has breath
Praise the Lord. That is the main reason why we gather Sunday by Sunday
in worship. We believe that setting aside one hour per week, one hour
out of 168 to praise the Lord collectively is a modest request.
We need to do it for the good of our own souls. because, let’s be
honest, when we are not together; we don’t do it very much. When
we gather, it is as if we are in a great theatre. Unfortunately, many
see themselves as the audience and the people up front, i.e. the
singers, instrumentalists and preachers, as performers. Ideally, we all
ought to be up here because the object of our worship and adoration is
God. God is the only audience there is. It’s an audience of one! We,
all of us, are the participants, and our worship is to please God, not
ourselves. The word of God, however it comes, comforts the afflicted
but also afflicts the comforted.
Over the years, we have developed a service that has elements of praise
to God, petitions or prayers to God, readings and sermons about God.
Praise, prayer and instruction. In some traditions, like the Orthodox,
it is almost all praise.
When I was studying in Jerusalem, we got up early one Sunday morning
and went to a Coptic service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We
got there at about 4:45 AM and the service was already underway. When
you arrive, you are given a stick with a rest on the top of it. You
stand all of the time, but you can rest yourself on that stick like a
single crutch. The service is all praise. There were about 8
priests, all dressed in yellow, and they sang loudly during the entire
time we were there, which was about 2 hours. They danced; they used the
censer, which made the room smoky and pungent with scent. They
later explained that all of the senses should be involved in praise;
thus there is voice or sound based on the scriptures, there is movement
or dance, there is smell from the scent, there is color and symbolism
for visual worship, and lastly there is the Eucharist every week in the
orthodox and Roman traditions. We may differ in our theological
understandings and in our likes or dislikes of music, but on this we
all agree. We are here to praise God, so we have sounds and sights.
Sometimes we have drama, other times liturgical dance. Some sing
beautifully, others simply drone. Some like stately old hymns, and
others prefer lively tunes where you can clap your hands- We are here,
as the psalmist said, to make a joyful noise. And you know what? When
we make a joyful noise to God, we forget all the things that irritate
us or upset us. Miraculously, we are grateful for the person
worshipping next to us, because, in their way they are praising God
also.
What a fortunate people we are-we have a building, and some don’t. We
have a choir that sings praises and enjoys each other as they do so. We
have a new instrument with more sounds than the psalmist knew existed
to lead us in praise. And lastly, we have each other. Sure we get upset
at times, but we know that when the chips are down, these are the folks
we want to be with, because they are here to praise, and they are here
because they care. Let us rejoice in our favoured position. Let
us rejoice in each other’s presence. Let us sing and laugh, eat and
chat; let us work and serve because we have experienced the Spirit of
God, and when that happens we want to share in Praise.
With the Psalmist who said Praise The Lord, we also say together-
PRAISE THE
LORD.
Amen.