Psalm 42 Sermon by the Rev Karl Przywala Today, we’re starting a series of sermons looking at the Book of Psalms. There are 150 psalms – you’ll find them pretty much in the middle of the Old Testament – we’re going to look at 6 of them, the first being Psalm 42. The psalms were and are the Jewish hymn book – they are designed to be sung as part of worship. Why do we use the psalms as part of our worship? And why have sermons on them? Thomas Cranmer was keen on them – indeed they were effectively the Prayer Book’s hymn book as well, as no other hymns were introduced to the Church of England until the nineteenth century. In the Prayer Book, Cranmer laid down that the entire psalter should be read every month – all 150 psalms. We don’t quite live up to his expectations! In fact, the Reformers as a whole were keen on the psalms, as they were on the rest of the Old Testament. Article seven of the 39 Articles of Religion, Of the Old Testament, states, “The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ.” Christ is there to be found in the Old Testament. And he offers you everlasting life. If you look for Christ, you’ll find him. And everlasting life is there to be received if you chose to do so. In 1513, the German Reformer Martin Luther began a series of lectures to his students on the Psalms and he went on to write a commentary on them. Roland Bainton in his biography of Luther, saw the Psalms as the record of the spiritual struggles through which Luther was continually passing. He wrote to Erasmus, “Although I am a doctor [of theology], I have to do just as a child and say word for word every morning and whenever I have time the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Psalms.” The Swiss Reformer John Calvin also wrote a commentary on the Psalms, saying of them, “there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise.” So, let’s turn to Psalm 42, which you’ll find on page 550 of the church Bibles. The Book of Psalms comes in the Bible immediately after the Book of Job. And they carry on similar sentiments to that book. Job dealt with the question of human suffering and the question of how we deal with God in the face of this. Job’s wife challenged him to curse God. We have echoes of that in the third verse of Psalm 42. Calamity has befallen the psalmist and because of this “men say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” Have you had people say this to you? I have. Whilst watching the news an atheist friend turned to me and said, “Where is your God in all this?” What would be your response? The psalmist doesn’t pretend that he is unaffected by what is occurring. Indeed, he’s in a state which I think we would describe as depression. Verse 5, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” God, through writings such as this, gives us permission to feel this way and to express that to him. He wants us to be honest with him. Remember, he knows. Psalm 139, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me...For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” The psalmist remembers a time when his circumstances and his relationship with God were different. Verse 4, “I remember ...how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God.” It’s likely that the reason the psalmist is downcast and is no longer leading the procession to the house of God is because he is in enforced exile. In verse 9 he tells us he is “oppressed by the enemy” something he repeats in the following psalm when he calls upon God to rescue him from deceitful and wicked men. Those are likely to have been the circumstances of the psalmist. I think that many in our age can be in a sort of self-imposed exile. How many have a memory of former church involvement when indeed they were part of a multitude that processed to the house of God. They mourn the loss of that former experience, but what to do about it? In the case of the psalmist, his “soul pants for you, O God” verse 1. Is this our response in down times? Or do we seek solace by other means – distractions? I remember as a child sitting in church and telling a statue of Jesus that I didn’t believe in him. I was a young child, possibly eight. My sentiment wasn’t the result of oppression, more childish defiance. But to whom was I addressing my thoughts? You don’t talk to someone who isn’t there. This sentiment underlies even the Bible’s darkest moments. Yes, there was atheism even then – it isn’t a modern invention. Psalm 14, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”. But that is never the stance of the biblical writers, however bleak things may be. The psalmist knows what the answer to his predicament is: “Put you hope in God”. As I’ve indicated, it’s likely that external factors have impinged on his relationship with God and his ability to worship in the way that he used to – he’s in exile, captive to those who mock his faith. What is it that assaults those of our age and interferes with their relationship with God, their willingness or ability to worship him? Surely not physical exile. There may be road closures, or inconvenient service times, or things not exactly to our liking, but, I put it to you, people could come to worship God if they chose to. If we or others are in exile, it’s more likely to be one of our choosing, or one derived from a prevailing culture to which we’ve succumbed. Let’s return to my atheist friend in front of the television news. “Where is your God in all this?” I don’t want to resort to an easy answer in the face of such a question. But I recall, I responded in the only way I could think of at the time. He’s in the midst of it. And he cares so much that Jesus died on the cross because of it. God wants us to be honest with him. It’s significant, I think, that Jesus turned to the psalms as he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, the opening verse of Psalm 22. That was how Jesus felt at that moment – forsaken by God. But to whom did he express that sentiment? To God. The psalmist asks in Psalm 42 at verse 2, “When can I go and meet with God?” For him the answer to that question was probably to be found after his release from those who had captured him, when he would be able to return from exile and be able to worship in the way he wished, as a Jew at the Temple in Jerusalem. That is not the case for us and those who surround us. For we are not in that sort of exile. The answer for us is still, “Put your hope in God”. The God we see in Jesus Christ, who died for us on the cross. And this same God, Jesus, we know to be in the midst of our suffering. We know it because of what Jesus was willing to do for us on the cross. But we also know that through his suffering and death, Jesus offers salvation: in Article seven’s words, “Everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ.” At Jesus’ death, the curtain of the temple was symbolically torn in two from top to bottom, allowing direct access to God. And we can meet the Christ who offers us that direct access to God, as we gather, right here and right now. Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 02:29:53 +0000
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