GOD’S DWELLING PLACE

BY ADAM FRONCZEK AUGUST 26, 2018

It’s conventional wisdom that creative things—art, music, poetry—have the capacity to move us to feelings and experiences that are different than ordinary words. Too often, I fear, the do not do that. Psalms have become domesticated and regular. They are the stuff of routine recitation in a predictable church service. We say these responses assigned by the pastor each week barely thinking about them, waiting for the “real” Scripture lesson that will be read next and that will be the focus of the sermon. Psalms say some nice things about God, we think, and so it’s good to read them in church, but that’s about it. Some of you may have even noticed that when Psalms say things that aren’t nice, we don’t read those verses. Other than that, they’re boring. Today I hope to help you rediscover that the Psalms are poetry—creative energy meant to move us to feel and think and live in faith. Not only that, but Psalms are poetry written by real people—people like you and me who themselves loved and hurt and felt things deeply.

Let’s start with a few examples. Some of the Psalms are what you might expect, nice words about God. The book begins with these words in :

“Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.”

Psalm 84, which we read this morning, might belong in that category, it’s beautiful opening lines “How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place,” are the setting for a choral work by Brahms members of our Knox Choir surely know.

Some Psalms are more complicated than that. I admitted, the church has an unfortunate history of reading verses from the Psalms and intentionally removing the lines that don’t sound nice. Psalm 139 begins beautifully with the words, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me…and continues, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…” We rarely read the verses that say, “O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from you…” Two chapters earlier, Psalm 137 is even more nasty: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator!” it reads. “Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” This is the Bible? What’s going on? There’s real hatred here.

Let’s back up for a moment and look at some broad strokes of what is going on in the Book of Psalms. scholar Walter Brueggemann writes that the Psalms can be roughly divided into three types. (see Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, 1995.) First, there are Psalms of orientation. These psalms represent our early foundations of faith and morality; they say the kinds of things we teach to our children and believe when we are young. Good and faithful people will prosper, the wicked will not succeed. People who do justice and act in love will be repaid in kind, and they will be happy. These lessons are worth hearing, they are words worth living by, and they are true, sometimes.

But often these things are not true. As we grow and mature, we realize that sometimes tragedy strikes, even when it is not deserved. We suffer through a life changing illness or accident. We lose a child. We struggle with addiction or depression. We once again house homeless people in our church this week because our city does not know how to talk about homelessness. Life does not make sense. For these times, there are different psalms, a second type we call psalms of disorientation. These psalms come from the times in life when we suffer and struggle, when we question faith or lose it altogether and refuse to believe. When Jesus cries out in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” he did not make up those words; he is quoting Psalm 22. Apparently, someone else had felt such sadness before.

There are a third kind of psalms. Most of us know someone, usually an older person, someone who has had some life experience. Perhaps you are aware of the losses or struggles in their life, you know that they once went to war, that they endured bankruptcy or lost their business, or faced criminal charges, or they have lost the love of their life, and yet, they are not lost, they seem at peace, wiser than the rest of us, capable of hope even in spite of the suffering they’ve known. The third kind of psalms are written by this group of people and they’re called psalms of reorientation. They’re written by people who have been up against a test of faith and have discovered faith on the other side of the struggle. It’s a richer, deeper faith, learned through experience. In Psalms of reorientation, people say God is the one who... “redeems your life from the pit…so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 103:4)

Maybe it would be nice if all of us prayed only these psalms of reorientation—if all of us were people of mature faith and emotion, at peace with the times of struggle. But life isn’t like that. Some of us are still quite disoriented or are deeply troubled by the misfortune of someone else. There is a place for poetry that talks about deep sadness and anger. It moves us to act when things are not the way they are supposed to be. When we are overcome with our own grief or fear or anger, poetry allows us to give voice to those emotions. It may not sound very Christian to cry out to God to punish one’s enemies. Then again, I would argue it is better to place those feelings in God’s hands than to bottle them up inside until they are worked out by our own hands. Church is not supposed to hide bad feelings; it is supposed to provide a healthy outlet for them.

Even those simpler songs of orientation have their place—they are not just naïve. We need places in life where we experience beauty, celebrate the good, rejoice in the future that God is preparing, and do so without the darkness of life overshadowing us. When our celebrating is over, the darkness will still be there.

Now, with that background, let’s look together at Psalm 84, I’m going to read through this psalm a verse or two at a time; you’re welcome to pick up your Bible again and follow along with me.

The Psalm begins with this beautiful phrase:

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!”

If you’re wanting some historical context for the Psalm, some information about it, the obvious question seems to be, where is God’s dwelling place? Who can tell me, in ancient Israel, where is God’s dwelling place? Of course, the —in ancient Israel, all religious life was centered around the Temple—it was understood that God’s presence could be found there. The Psalm continues,

“My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; [another name for the Temple] my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”

So, this person loves the presence of God, and it seems there are a couple of possibilities about the longing to get there. Some scholars have argued this person is on their way to the Temple, they are on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and can’t wait to get there. Alternatively, I wonder if maybe they cannot get there. Maybe Psalm 84 was written by someone unable to make the journey or who wondered if they were unworthy of God’s presence. Maybe it was written during the Babylonian exile— Jerusalem has been attacked and the Temple destroyed, and the Israelites are living as exiles, as refugees, in Babylon.

This may be a song of deep sadness written by a person who has not felt God’s presence lately, or even someone who cannot get to it because they have been forcibly removed from their home. That’s the kind of emotional weight that gets lost when we treat these psalms as routine religious recitations on the way to the more important Scripture lesson. Between the lines of these psalms are the real lives of spiritually hungry people, maybe on their way to see the Lord, but maybe feeling unable to get there. And they cry out to God for help.

Perhaps for the writer of this psalm, things aren’t so bad. Is it a time of real disorientation? Compare it to Psalm 137, which we know comes from the exile: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” That’s a psalm of disorientation. That person is so overcome with anger and hatred that they want to hurt the innocent children of their imperial oppressors. We’ve all had times in our lives where we have thought and even said awful things— sometimes we meant them even though they were wrong, other times we didn’t mean them but we were just so angry we couldn’t help ourselves. Psalm 137 comes from that place. Psalm 84 is different. There is longing and maybe sadness. But the longing is grounded in a desire to be back in God’s presence and a real hope that it will happen. Things will get better.

The psalm continues with words that show us why this person is hopeful:

“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. 4 Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.

5 Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”

“My king and my God”—that’s who we’re praying to! Even if this person feels distant from God’s presence now, even though she may have reason to doubt God; she chooses to call the Lord “my King and My God.” You, God, she says, you are “the sovereign power of the universe and the center of my personal life” (Mays, “Psalms,” in Interpretation Commentaries). This person knows trust in God is the foundation of happiness—security, hope for the future, even in the face of struggle. This is mature faith. These words have creative power—the power to bring about change in one’s life. No matter who else seems to be in charge, the Lord is “my king and my God.”

One test of a good psalm is, Does it make you want to say yourself what the psalmist is saying? Does it make you want to say what we hear in verses 8-10:

“O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of ! 9 Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed. 10 For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.”

“O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer.” Does the psalm make you want to say that?

It’s my hunch that most of us would pray more if we really trusted that our prayers would be heard—and answered. Unfortunately, life is so full of concrete physical examples of people who make us feel like our voice does not matter and our requests will not be answered. When it comes to God, who we have not seen, much greater faith is needed to trust that we are being heard—that God cares and listens and will answer.

Psalms inspire me because these writers speak and believe in the power of their own speech. Words carry power—they do. There is an analogy I use often, with new members getting ready to make a profession of faith, church officers getting ready to answer ordination questions, or anyone who asks me why we say statements of faith on so many Sundays. A preacher named Tom Long says that speaking to God is like falling in love. If you love someone, and you want that love to grow, at some point you have to take a leap and say, “I love you.” You may not be sure, but if you don’t say it, you’ll never learn how the power of those words will grow and change over years and decades of commitment. It all begins only if you are willing to speak. (Long, Testimony, Introduction)

The people who wrote the psalms were a people who spoke. They pray—and pray honestly. They lift their voices in anger and fear when things are at their worst. They demand from God a more merciful world and a more hopeful tomorrow. They believe that their voice matters and will be heard because they believe that God can be trusted—and loves them. That is why the Psalm 84 ends with the words

“For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly. 12 O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.”

This person who is still far off from being back in the Temple of God, still knows that God will protect and one day lead him home.

I saved one part of the Psalm for the end, you might have noticed I skipped over it. In verses 6 and 7, a small detail brings home an important point: “As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. 7 They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.”

Nobody knows where the valley of Baca was—biblical historians have no idea. I mention that detail because while I’ve provided some basic context and grounded this Psalm in a potential time and place, expert information is not what the psalms are about. The Psalm is a song—it’s a work of poetry. And the question isn’t whether you understand every word of it, the question is does it move you to trust God more, does it move you to long as the Psalmist does to be in God’s presence? The fact that no one knows where Baca is reminds us that you don’t have to be an expert in order to pray the psalms. These are the words of ordinary people, seeking faith, just like you and me. I believe God will hear your prayers just like God heard theirs.

If you long for a faith that can speak any honest word to a God who will listen, a God who can withstand criticism and anger, doubt and lack of faith, who will love you back into the relationship when you have gone astray, who will never give up on you, and whose presence can be found. If you long to meet people who have had those same longings and have given them a voice. Pay attention to the psalms.

Amen.