UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 51-55   

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 51-55 with your spouse or household  then re-read Psalm 51 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 51:15-17 asking the Lord, the question “What does this text mean?” Then 2 mins in silence asking the Lord what He is saying to you personally through Psalm 51:15-17 and then share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

PSALM 51: 15-17 “ Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

I lived in Cambridge for 15 years. Virtually all the 30 colleges have a chapel and in all the colleges without exception I believe, the pews face towards one another across the nave. They do not face the altar. Why? Cambridge was founded by Benedictine monks and the chapels were constructed in this way because of the Benedictine tradition of chanting and singing the psalms back and forth to one another.  In the introduction to this blog, I referenced Craig Carter (1)who said “A number of years ago I learned an interesting fact about Benedictine spirituality in reading ‘The Rule of St.Benedict.’ I discovered that the monks have traditionally chanted the entire Psalter in worship every week. “Why the Psalms?”… Why not the Gospels? Why not Romans? Why not the Bible as a whole? It is because for Augustine both Christ and the church speak frequently in the Psalms.”

Augustine and the church fathers read the psalms prophetically. Belief in (2) Divine inspiration is what allowed the church fathers to read the book of Psalms prophetically. The notion that the psalter is a book of prophecy is perhaps one of the distinguishing characteristics of patristic exegesis. Interpreters such as Augustine often referred to the psalmist  as “the prophet.” (3) In the introduction to Augustine’s exposition of the Psalms, five kinds of patristic Christological interpretation are (i) a word to Christ (ii) a word about Christ (iii) a word of Christ spoken by him (iv) a word about the church (v) a word of the church, spoken by the church.

Here in Psalm 51 we have a psalm that is ‘a word of the church spoken by the church’, where we as the church can identify with David in his repentance. It is an exhortation for us to call out to God for his mercy and wash away our sin. How seriously do you and I take sin as an offence against God? (4) David’s confession of sin is his response to adultery with Bathsheba, and is narrated in 2 Samuel 11- 12. David’s confession is genuine and he throws himself completely on God and does not try to make excuses. He realizes that his sin goes deep and has been long-standing and he realizes that he is by nature sinful. The church can pray these words and identify with David. (5) Psalm 51  may be  the purest and most profound plea for God’s mercy in all of Scripture. It is in the middle, of the sequence of 7 penitential Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143,   

For Augustine this psalm carries a double grace, both as an exhortation to cry out to the Lord for mercy and his cleansing from sin but it is also a means to find the grace of Christ. It is through a sacrifice of praise that we will be shown the way of salvation of God through Christ.  Through a sacrifice of praise and through  singing the psalms, the church fathers believed that  the church could grow in virtue. The church fathers actually believed  that inhabiting the world view of the psalms and through harmonious reading of them ( eg singing and chanting ), virtue would be instilled and  (6) they were quick to ask how the biblical text could instil virtue. (7) Saint Gregory believed that the aim of the Psalter is to reshape us by means of virtue into the divine likeness so that Christ might be formed in us.

The historical order of the text however was not of significance to church fathers like Saint Gregory.  Several times Gregory draws attention to the fact that the psalms do not always follow historical sequence. Psalms 51 and 52 present the most obvious example of the difficulty. The former is connected with David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah ( 2 Samuel 11) and the latter with the incident involving Doeg the Edomite.’ Gregory notes that if chronology had been important then the psalms would be in reverse order.

There is a crisis in hermeneutics currently (8). Why? Maybe it is because we have elevated the importance of historical context and we have had an almost exclusively rational approach to the Scripture rather than seeing Scripture as sacred texts that reveal Christ and sacred texts that the Holy Spirit has inspired to help us lead a more virtuous life.

Prayer    

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

References

(1)  Carter, C.A. “ Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition.”, Summary, 201- 205

(2)  Boersma, H. Scripture as Real Presence, 151.

(3)  Boersma, H. Scripture as Real Presence, 148.

(4) Drawn from Tidball, D. Signposts, Psalm 51.

(5) Drawn from https://psaltermark.com/2021/01/30/psalm-51-and-saint-augustine/

(6) Boersma, H. Scripture as Real Presence,  145.

(7) Boersma, H. Scripture as Real Presence, 157.

(8) Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 1.