The Costly Loss of Psalm-Singing in the Church

Presented at Friends’ Day, AGST, 9/16/06 by R. Mark Shipp

Introduction

I grew up in an environment in which few psalms were sung in church. Indeed, when one looks at the Great Songs of the Church (Number Two), its three sections include Hymns, Spiritual Songs (“gospel songs”), and Special Songs, but, interestingly, no special section for Psalms. The “new” Great Songs (1986) has abandoned any attempt at organization surrounding “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” in favor of a modified trinitarian arrangement—songs of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and songs of the Church and Christian discipleship (presumably songs in some way related to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church). When one looks at the scripture index in the back of each volume, one finds that there are 126 “references” to psalms in the old Great Songs and 109 “references” to psalms in the new Great Songs, exclusive of indexed psalm readings. These are by no means all metrical versions or paraphrases of psalm texts; most are simply references or allusions to psalm passages.

When one compares recent hymnals and song collections with those of previous generations, one is struck by the paucity of metrical psalm settings in those published more recently. In The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, a popular Evangelical hymnal, there are 105 references or allusions to psalms, but not a single one alluding to or paraphrasing more than 2 verses. The Hymnal (Episcopal Church, 1982) contains metrical versions of 23 psalms out of 720 entries—fairly typical of 20th century hymnals. The Baptist Hymnal (1956) has only 11 psalm entries of any kind.

The Function of Psalmody in the Church

Compare this decline of Psalm singing in recent years with the rich history the Psalms have had in both synagogue and church worship traditions. The unselfconscious appropriation of Old Testament psalms in the early centuries A. D. by Christians is witness to the foundational character of psalmody in church worship. In short, the canonical psalms have not been the exclusive resource for singing in the church (witness the Philippian Hymn to Christ, the Magnificat in Luke 1, etc.), but have been the primary resource. I suggest that the Psalms have functioned, and continue to function, in these ways: they inform the theology of Christian worship and provide the movement and vocabulary of worship; they provide the individual worshipper with the vocabulary of lament, praise, and thanksgiving; and they give the community resources for dealing with crises.

The Psalms and the Theology of Christian Worship

The Psalms provide critical and useful parameters for worship; i.e., they set boundaries for what is an appropriate expression of worship to a holy and loving God. But this must be qualified: not all expressions of worship in the Psalter are appropriate for Christians today. For one thing, we do not engage in temple worship and the sacrificial system has been discontinued. For another, some imagery is difficult or elusive for us, such as the destructive power of God’s theophanic presence in Psalm 29. In general, though, the theology of the Psalms informs our worship in at least these ways: they provide appropriate ways of thinking about God; they depict the full panorama of human expressions of grief, joy, penitence, and thanksgiving; and they provide us with appropriate expressions and movements in worship.

Psalms Theology and Concepts of God: The Psalms help us to know who it is we are worshipping in the language of religious and poetic metaphor. Some of these metaphors appear foreign to our usual ways of conceptualizing God, but are important and even critical when understood correctly. One of the more prevalent images of God in the Psalms is that of king. This is particularly evident in the Psalms of God’s Kingship (93, 95-99, 29, etc.), but his kingship also shows up elsewhere in the Psalms, such as the Royal Psalms, reflecting the human king and his relationship with the divine king. As soon as we come to Psalm 2, we immediately encounter a difficulty for the egalitarian and democratic nature of American society and even most churches—how can we conceive of God as king, when we often think of kings as despots who rule by the arbitrary exercise of force? In almost every instance of such passages, however, God exercises his kingship to defeat the malevolent forces contrary to his shalom (such as Psalm 2) and especially on behalf of his covenant people (psalm 99) and the poor, the weak, and needy (Psalm 72). God as king is a metaphor for his sovereign sway over his creation and his righteous and compassionate rule over his people.

God as creator, preserver, or convulser of his creation is common in many of the Psalms. It is difficult to read these passages without thinking of storms, earthquakes, and the like; a few years ago, a cartoonist depicted God in heaven casting down thunderbolts from heaven, while saying “Metaphorical? I’ll give you metaphorical!“ Perhaps the best known of these psalms dealing with God’s creative and destructive power is Psalm 29:

The voice of the LORD is powerful, the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars, the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness, the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh (vv. 4-8).

Such passages demonstrate forcefully God’s power over his creation. He is sovereign over all destructive and chaotic elements, and the mightiest natural forces known to mankind are simply tools at his command. The pastoral point must not be missed: all the chaos and disruption in the world, all the Katrinas and tsunamis combined are not somehow beyond the power and control of the Almighty. Yet another important point: where do those who sing this psalm experience God’s power and majesty in its holiness and awe-inspiring splendor most completely? Psalm 29:9 says “And in his temple all say ‘Glory!’” It is in worship where we perceive that the chaos in the natural world, in the political world, and in our relationships is under the sovereign power, control, and compassion of the Lord.

Perhaps the most prevalent image of God in the Psalms is that of covenant-keeper; he is the one who answers prayer. In his work They Cried to the Lord, Patrick Miller suggests that it is the covenant commitment of God to be near to those who cry out to him. While this is a common motif in the Psalms, Psalm 107 in particular is the psalm of the cry to the Lord and his response:

Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.

Notice in particular the last line: “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.” This is the common refrain throughout the psalm, occurring in verses 6, 13, 19, and 28, in response to physical and spiritual distress. Indeed, the entire Psalm is about God’s steadfast loyalty and reliability—in Hebrew the little word hesed—underscored by the occurrence of this word in both the opening and closing verses of the Psalm. He is the one who is reliable to answer our prayers when we cry out in in lament and Thanksgiving. It is to these responses to God in lament, praise, and thanksgiving to which we now turn.

The Panorama of Human Responses: The Psalter is remarkably comprehensive in its depiction of the human condition and in its portrayal of the worshipper’s response to God. Contrary to many modern voices which call for very few if any “downer” songs, echoing the tendency of pop radio to avoid soft, slow, or contemplative songs, the Psalter is roughly 1/2 composed of laments. At least three types or genres of psalms are represented: laments, thanksgivings, and hymns of praise. There are also many sub-categories, which more or less fall under these types: wisdom psalms (1, 119), Zion (46) and royal psalms (2, 72, 110), psalms of trust, entrance liturgies (25), pilgrimage songs (120-134), and even a royal wedding (45). Individuals lament due to the presence of sin (psalm 51), oppressors or false accusations (5), illness (6 and 22), etc. Communities lament due to famine (possibly 126), corporate sin (106), military conquest, or exile (137).

The full range of responses to God in times of crisis, thanksgiving for deliverance, and praise to God for what he has done in creation and redemption is represented in the corporate worship of Israel. I have heard it said that we are not the people of the lament, that in Christ it is no longer appropriate to lament; we are the people of praise, only. It strikes me that this is like saying to a small child, “It is not appropriate for you to cry to me when you are hurt or frightened, because I love you and provide for you.” In the same way, the Psalter encourages us to bring our brokenness, our despair, our thanksgiving, and our joy before the throne of the one who not only breaks the oaks and makes the mountains dance (29), but who also calms and quiets our souls, like a child in its mother’s lap (131). To fail to engage the full range of lament, thanksgiving, and praise is, I think, to fail to take seriously the fact that in a congregation of 500, at least 250 of them are in the middle of a profound crisis any given Sunday.

The Psalms and Christian Worship: It is a truism that the Psalter is the hymnbook of the second temple. Whatever the origin of individual psalms, the book of Psalms as a collection has come down to us as a type of hymnal. There are many indications of this. First, there are specific, probably musical directions given in the superscriptions or internally in several psalms (i.e., many of them are indicated for the mnatseah, usually translated “choir director,” found 55 times in the Psalter; possible tunes such as the “Doe of the Dawn;” and liturgical terms such as selah). Also, there are several internal indications in the book that the collection as a whole is intended for corporate worship, such as the response pattern in Psalm 136 (“For he is good, for his loyalty is everlasting”), the call to respond with “Glory!” in Psalm 29:9, and the call “Let all the people say ‘Amen! Praise the Lord!’” in Psalm 106:48.

There is also a kind of literary and theological movement in individual psalms and in the entire book. Walter Brueggemann has noted that there is a movement from what he calls orientation (creation and some wisdom psalms which depict God in heaven and a stable and responsive world), to disorientation (lament due to the collapse of previous stability), to re-orientation (thanksgiving for deliverance from the peril or difficulty, and anticipation of praise). There is a particular movement from psalms of stability, to lament, to thanksgiving, to praise, which should not be overlooked. First, many individual laments remember the good times of the past and lament the distress of the present (Psalm 22). Second, laments almost always look forward to deliverance and offering sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise (psalm 22, 6, etc.). Third, thanksgiving psalms often recall the distress of the past, the cry to the Lord, his response, and the deliverance of the Lord (Psalm 32), and look forward to praise. Hymns of praise praise the Lord for what he has done in creation and redemption. There is a movement, therefore, between many of the types of psalms corresponding to the experience of worshippers who cry out to the Lord and wait for his deliverance.

But there is a movement in the Psalter as a whole, as well. In Hebrew, the book is called the Book of Praises, but this title is by no means the obvious designation from the first half of the book. Books 1-3 are are comprised largely of laments, while books 4-5 contain many of the hymns, suggesting that there is a movement from lament to praise in the Psalter as a whole. Perhaps it is fair to say that indeed it is the book of praises, and that we are the people of praise, but it is a visceral, gutsy kind of praise, praise which comes on the other side of lament.

What I mean to say is this: not only does the Psalter portray the whole panorama of human responses to God, it provides structured lament, thanksgiving, and praise for individual and corporate worship. For example, lament is not just a cry; it is a cry to God. It is not the absence of faith, it is faith on the edge, quintessential faith, when one is hanging by a single fingernail, but nevertheless cries out to God. It is structured grief, faith in the middle of chaos, focussed and directed towards the Lord of the storm, and it looks ahead to God’s eventual and certain response. Thanksgivings are not just mindless recitation of thanks, but the offering of gratitude to God for his intervention and deliverance. Praise is not just a a mantra—praise, praise, praise, praise—but there is always content to that praise, indicated in the Psalms by the little word “for.” Praise is due him because of what he has done in the world and what he has done in the life of the worshipper.

In some ways the Psalms may provide structure for our corporate worship as well. We must never forget that we come into the presence of a holy God, broken and unprofitable vessels. It is only because a death has occurred—our Lord’s and subsequently our own—that we can come into his presence at all. We as ministers of the Word have the privilege of bringing to our congregations a word of judgment and grace: judgment, because the world, its corruption and values have been judged; grace, because in our corruption and need God has not abandoned us but has brought us into his presence through the blood of his son. The Psalms help us to recognize in corporate and individual worship the reality of sin, judgment, sickness, and evil, as well as the reality of God’s overwhelming grace and compassion.