Musical shape of soul

An excellent article drawing on Athanasius on singing the Psalms. Useful for self-expression? Not primarily: foremost, they impress their truth into us, only then do they form our expression. The Song-Shaped Soul, by Steven R Guthrie (pdf).

Where is your God?

A video worth playing a couple of times, on which to ponder:

Bish informs us it comes to us courtesy of UCCF Relay workers Millie (performer), Rael (poet) and Andy (director/cameraman).

[HT: Dan Steel]

Bless the Lord, my soul - in Christ

Making chicken creole this morning before church, singing:

O Thou my soul, bless God the Lord;
And all that in me is
Be stirrèd up his holy name
To magnify and bless.

Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God,
And not forgetful be
Of all his gracious benefits
He hath bestowed on thee.
All thine iniquities who doth
Most graciously forgive:
Who thy diseases all and pains
Doth heal, and thee relieve.
Who doth redeem thy life, that thou
To death mayeset not go down;
Who thee with loving-kindness doth
And tender mercies crown:

Who with abundance of good things
Doth satisfy thy mouth;
So that, even as the eagle's age,
Renewèd is thy youth.

God righteous judgement executes
For all oppressèd ones.
His ways to Moses he made known,
His acts to Israel's sons.

The Lord our God is merciful
And he is gracious,
Long-suffering, and slow to wrath,
In mercy plenteous.
He will not chide continually,
Nor keep his anger still.
With us he dealt not as we sinned,
Nor did requite our ill.

For as the heaven in its height
The earth surmounteth far,
So great to those that do him fear
His tender mercies are:
As far as east is distant from
The west, so far hath he
From us removèd in his love,
All our iniquity.

Such pity as father hath
Unto his children dear,
Like pity shows the Lord to such
As worship him in fear.
For he remembers we are dust,
And he our frame well knows.
Frail man, his days are like the grass,
As flower in field he grows:
For over it the wind doth pass,
And it away is gone;
And of the place where once it was
It shall no more be known.

But unto them that do him fear
God's mercy never ends;
And to their children's children still
His righteousness extends:
To such as keep his covenant,
And mindful are alway
Of his commandments just and good,
That they may them obey.

The Lord preparèd hath his throne
In heavens firm to stand;
And every thing that being hath
His kingdom doth command.

O ye his angels, that excel
In strength, bless ye the Lord;
Ye who obey what he commands,
And hearken to his word.
O bless and magnify the Lord,
Ye glorious hosts of his;
Ye ministers that do fulfil
Whate'er his pleasure is.

O bless the Lord, all ye his works,
Wherewith the world is stored
In his dominions every where.
My soul, bless thou the Lord.

[Psalm 103, from the Revised Scottish Metrical psalter]

And bless the Lord, my soul, that vv.17-18 was true of the Messiah Jesus:

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

And we, in Him, are bound up in his covenant-keeping, his obedience, and his righteousness - my soul, bless thou the Lord!

Christ in all the Scriptures

For months now I've recurringly had Handel's I know that my Redeemer liveth in my head (the lyrics are Job's and Paul's, but Handel did a good job with the setting). In my opinion the genius of Handel's Messiah is not principally in his gift for setting lyrics to music (listen to how the melody follows the words of 'every valley...'!) but was the skill of Charles Jennens, who compiled the libretto, taking texts from throughout Scripture to form the story (or Biblical Theology) of the Messiah.

Mike Reeves points out in this excellent talk on Psalm 1 [HT: Glen], that the Psalmists and inspired compiler(s) of the book of Psalms got there well before Jennens, however - what a marvellous musical story of the Messiah is the book of Psalms! I've been trying to get my students to see this for years, and delightfully they're getting it as the psalms proclaim to them Christ that they might trust and delight in Him, and proclaim Him to others.

I grew up with the psalms, singing at least 4 each week in church services, and experiencing how they point to Christ by unresolved tension, unfulfilled perfection, and the experience of the Annointed King, I didn't start appreciating how the book works until as a student I read Grogan's Prayer, praise & prophecy: a theology of the Psalms. I don't recall whether I'd now agree with all of it, but highly recommended to get you started.

It reminds me of the children's talk I gave this morning, in which (Luke 24) Jesus finds some disciples scratching their heads for what Jesus' death and reported resurrection mean, and lovingly says something to the effect of, "You ejits, I spent 2000 years telling you in advance what I'd be doing these past 3 days, and had it written in Law, in Psalms, and Prophecy - have you not read it or did you think I was having youse on??" Thankfully in grace he explained it, opened their hearts to understand it, and then (are you wishing you could've been there?) what do you think the NT letters are based on, but those first seminars in Biblical Christology?

The Sunday School Answer

I know what the answer is, but I'm not quite sure of the question. Seriously. The answer's 'Jesus'. (Surprise!) The broadest question might be, "Who fulfils this psalm?" Answer: Jesus. "Whom does this psalm foreshadow?" works too - answer, Jesus. Then, 'About whom was this psalm written?' I think I'd have to say 'The King / the Righteous man / Israel (etc.) in the first instance, with an awareness that there was a greater ideal, that the King / The Righteous / true Israel wasn't actually fulfilling those things, so with a trust in God that he would one day provide so as to fulfil the psalm.' Dave posted some (very good) talks from Mike Reeves on psalms 1 & 15 and a debate kicked off about interpretation (again), because I said foreshadow rather than predict. Although I'm still thinking through this so I don't think I'd phrase some of this how I did then, here's what I meant, from some notes I wrote for small group leaders when we studied the psalms in the West Midlands CUs last year:

Promise-fulfilment
Psalms are not so much direct predictions of the future, but they contain promises which are not entirely fulfilled in the present so look forward to the future. (Sometimes these are refered to as types, and the fulfilments as antitypes.) The OT type promises more than the present, and the NT antitype fulfills the divine purpose implicit in the earlier event. Often Jesus is taken as being the antitype of descriptions in the psalms. That is, he fulfils the description of a psalm even though it was a personal testimony, not a ‘Thus says the Lord: in the latter days…’ prophecy. [The most obvious one is Ps.22.] So Jesus is the perfect man linking Eden to Hebrews in Psalm 8, he’s the perfect priest linking Genesis 14 to Hebrews (5 & 6) in Psalm 110, he’s the perfect King beyond David’s experience, the perfect Worshipper beyond the faithful Israelite and the perfect Object of worship, etc. This isn’t usually a straight ‘fit the peg in the hole’ fulfilment: the antitype is usually greater than the type. Jesus more than fulfils the psalms in every way. E.g. He suffers for righteousness’ sake, as the king over God’s people, like David, but he has no need for confession, unlike David: David is a shadow of the King to come. So we’re not looking just for sentences-which-only-Jesus-fulfils sprinkled randomly through the psalms. We’ll be thinking, What did this mean at the time – in what way was it the psalmist’s experience / hope / lament / prayer / praise? And how does Jesus fulfil this even more?

You are not the hero
The hero of the psalm, the more-than-fulfilment, the antitype, is Jesus – not us! Now, once the NT applies it to Jesus, then because we are in Him, and co-heirs of his righteousness, then some of it applies to us too (E.g. Ps.2, Rev.12, Rev.2.26-27). But it doesn’t apply directly to us without going through Jesus – in fact, it didn’t even apply to the psalmist without going through Jesus, the Messiah, but they didn’t say that so explicitly. (There are some hints of awareness e.g. in Ps.40.)

I'm not entirely happy with how I phrased everything then, and I'm still thinking through links between Christology and the doctrine of revelation as it applies to the psalms. Comments on that specifically very welcome.

But I sometimes think that we're so caught up with what the question is that we forget we're all agreeing on the beautiful answer that every child in Sunday School can give us: Jesus!