Psalm 116: Thanksgiving psalm

Structure:

l   V1-4: Intro and reason. Saying he loves the Lord and why he loves the Lord: “heard me”.

l   V5-11: The structure is known to be difficult here because of the changes in the personal pronouns, switching between first, second and third persons. Context is temple worship. Something goes terribly wrong for somebody and that person cries out to Yahweh in the temple. Then they go home, and Yahweh responds to their plea. In responses to the promises they made, they come back to do good for Yahweh.

l   V12-19: Response. Offerings (Thanksgiving, sacrifice), temple worship, fulfillment of vows.

Purpose:

l   Testify the goodness of God to the worshipping community, so those who are in the worshipping community who are in distress will turn to Yahweh, so they then too may be delivered, give thanks and testify.

l   Read communally.

l   Disasters in the contexts of ancient Israel are most commonly agricultural or childlessness.

l   There’s a temptation for childless women to turn to fertility gods, and often goods of the lands are used to represent fertility, eg. Drinking wine etc. That’s why 1Samuel Eli thought Hannah was drunk. People in desperate circumstances will clutch at any straw. Here the psalmist says he didn’t clutch at any straw but turned to Yahweh.

Exegesis:

l   V1: “I love! For Yahweh heard.” Seems more like the exclamation “I love”. You can’t command the affections, but you can command actions. Love in Deuteronomy speaks of that obedient response. Speaking of the psalmist’s passionate response to what Yahweh has done. It is a response of commitment, of dedication and loyalty. Some say it’s theologically problematic to say “I love Yahweh because Yahweh heard me”. But Yahweh doesn’t seem to mind that one of the reasons why people love Yahweh is because Yahweh had done something good for them. It’s a profoundly relational declaration, of a God who’s near and responsive.

l   V3: Distress and anguish. It’s figurative: snares of death and pangs of Sheol. The living are not dead, but death conditions their living.

l   V4: The response is, “I called on the name of Yahweh”. Demonstrates that he is a faithful Israelite because he calls on the name.

l   V5: Yahweh’s gracious and righteous. Our God is merciful and compassionate. “Our”: communal relationship Israel enjoys with Yahweh.

l   V6: General and specific action of God: God protects the simple…. He saved me.

l   V7: Place of quiet and safety, it’s the home of the soul.

l   V8: Parallelism, you delivered… my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. Place of death.

l   V9: Contrast with V8. Place of life. Walking. To be in the presence of Yahweh is to be in the worshipping community, enjoying the presence of God.

l   V11: “liars”: How community functioned in the psalmist’s past.

l   V12: “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” There’s a bit of bargaining going on. It sounds like payment for services rendered, which is an unfortunate way of us relating to God. The best way of understanding this is a thank you present which is promised in advance as opposed to a fee for service. Eg. If your neighbour looks after your dog, it can be a bit insulting to pay them to do so. This is demonstrating your thanks: A costly present you give. A devotive offering is a way of giving a costly present.

l   V13: Passover celebration: How much meat is in a sheep? Quite a lot. BBQs going on everywhere in the temple and possibly extending outside. Cup of salvation is a metaphoric phenomenon but also a real thing people did. Meals often a way of the worshipping community gathering together: Chinese churches seem to do it better than Western churches.

Psalm 103: Thanksgiving hymn

What stands out?

l   Not angry forever.

l   The name of Yahweh.

l   The bit where Moses says “show me your glory” and Yahweh declares his name as “Yahweh Yahweh, slow to anger, abundant in hesed”, Ex34.

l   Talks a lot of different things: Moses, dust (Genesis), elements of history.

l   Godhead as fatherly. V13“As a father shows compassion to his children”. Naming the Godhead as father is something Jesus does then invites us to do. The notion of a name is distinct from the notion of a metaphor. There are lots of different metaphors of God throughout the bible, not necessarily naming God as father.

Pattern:

l   Starts with praise. Ends with “Praise Yahweh, my life/my soul/my being/my self” (lots of translation options). Starts and ends with exaltation.

l   Middle bit: a history supporting the claim.

l   All the “who” statements in V3-5.

l   It is possible to praise when feeling pretty glum.

l   All are called to join us in exaltation. At the end, we are called to join them. Not praising alone. Know who we are praising. The chief end of humanity is to glorify God.

l   Start and end with praise: but how do we convey to those in the middle of crisis that praise is the stance they ought to adopt? Tell them of the promises of God.

What mood does the Psalm convey?

l   Remembering the goodness of God, throughout history.

What responses does the Psalm call for?

l   Praise and remember the goodness of God.

How does your understanding of Yahweh’s hesed inform your theology of God?

l   Who God is.

l   Character of God in V8: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

How does your understanding of Yahweh’s hesed inform your relationship to God?

l   What God does.

l   The relationship with God in V3-5: who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

l   The hesed is V11-12: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

How might you use this Psalm in comforting someone in need (at church, in your home, at work)?

l   To remind the vulnerable person of the character of God and our relationship with God. Especially the hesed: how great God’s love is.

l   V6 God will work justice at the end: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

l   Righteousness and mercy: putting the two concepts together.

l   Can be used in: Chronic or terminal diseases. Grief: Ongoing context. In the midst of a crisis. Or when something is very uncertain (disease still being investigated): point out to what is certain to cling on in the time of uncertainty.

l   Emotions can be helpful in tapping us into something true about the world, eg. Joy in weddings, when birth of a child goes well, making a great achievement. However, emotions of sadness is also appropriate in some contexts, eg. Sadness in the lose of a child. However, the sadness can also get attached to something that’s not the right trigger for the sadness. The psalm can be used to try to shift this.

l   V3 “Heal your diseases”: is this a promise? The psalmist reminding themselves some of the way Yahweh has shown Yahweh’s fidelity to the psalmist. It’s not “any disease will be healed by Yahweh”. But remembering anytime the psalmist had been ill and not died from it: a statement recognising all past healings and all future healings is a gift from God, not that all future diseases will be healed by God.

l   What do you do for those whose experience of their father had been anything but “compassion”? If you struggle to see God in your father, then you will struggle to see the father in your God. To try to find with them an experience that will resonate, eg. The mother, the aunt, someone from school, etc. in order to think of the “father” and think of good things, and attach them to the cosmic God.

Thanksgiving psalms:

l   Hymns speak of God’s characteristics.

l   Andrew Sloane thinks Ps103 is more of a hymn than a thanksgiving.

l   Thanksgiving: the intimacy of the relationship it entails. For example, we can praise someone who we’ve never met, who has never done anything for me. We can’t thank them though because we are not in a position to thank them for something they’ve done specifically for me. Hymn is generally 3^rd person. We can only thank in the second person.

l   A few things need to be true about the world in order for thanksgiving to work. We can’t thank people who try to harm us. You can only thank someone who had done something in your favour. Acknowledging something that’s true of this relationship (the benefit you received), and acknowledge this is from the good of God, there is another tie between us, we are tied together in the relationship.

l   The different work they do theologically.

l   Most of the thanksgivings are individual thanksgivings.

l   The genre is usually introduced with the intention to thank Yahweh. Close with the repaying of a vow. It’s a thanks offering and there’s an element of ritual embedded in the thanksgivings.

l   Pure thanksgiving psalms are quite uncommon compared with hymns and lament. Thanksgiving as a phenomenon is not rare in psalter as laments end with thanksgiving. Often, we tie specific times of distress/circumstances that generated the prayer to which God responds and for which we give thanks. To thank and testify= todah/yadah. Giving thanks is always connected with distress. A pure thanksgiving is a retrospection on the past and a response now, when one has found oneself in a spacious rather than a confined space. If Paul is reflecting on the patterns of psalmic piety, when Paul talks about giving thanks, it’s not about ignoring the times of distress, but after the times of distress, God has demonstrated goodness, and on our part, is a response of thanksgiving. Not to ignore the broken world, but in the context of a broken world, in others brokenness and our own brokenness, we experience the good of God.

l   The dependent relationship we have with God: however we understand our relationship with God, absolute dependence on God is fundamental to our existence. We exist as those who depends on God. When we thank someone, we acknowledge that our good had been dependant on their being good to us.

Psalm 34

This psalm consists of both thanksgiving and instructions.[1] 
(Hebrew numbers)

V1-7: The psalmist announces praise, invites the community to join in,[2] and reports the psalmist’s personal encounter with Yahweh[3] in a situation of crisis where Yahweh listened and acted.[4]^,[5]

V7: “this poor one called, and Yahweh heard.”

V10: “Fear of the Lord” is the psalm’s most profound insight, where one simultaneous trembles in dread and joy due to the paradoxical awareness of one’s fragility, mortality and sinfulness as opposed to God’s almightiness, immortality and graciousness.[6]

V11: Lions is a metaphor for those who do not fear or seek the Lord.[7]

V12 is followed by a series of imperatives that speaks of living a life which embodies the “fear of the Lord.”[8]

V16-20 becomes descriptive, with statements about the Lord using anthropomorphic metaphors regarding eyes, ears and face of Yahweh in V16-18, followed by the description of God’s elected but suffering people, who has shattered hearts and crushed spirits, from V19-20.[9]

V21-23 concludes with God’s promise that those who hate the righteous will be held guilty, and those who seek refuge in him will not be held guilty.[10]

This is not so much a psalm on moral statements as it is a relational one. Yahweh is good in relation to us. When we are in need, Yahweh is near, listening to prayer and acting in response to the prayer. The answer involves rescue, deliverance, protection and redemption. Yahweh often seems far away and inactive, but those experiences must not be allowed to overwhelm.[11]

---

[1] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 329.

[2] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 321.

[3] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 325.

[4] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 1: Psalms 1-41, 477.

[5] Craigie, Psalms 1-50, 279.

[6] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 325.

[7] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 326.

[8] Craigie, Psalms 1-50, 280.

[9] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 328.

[10] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 328.

[11] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 1: Psalms 1-41, 486.

The Lindt Café Seige in Sydney: learning to give thanks

The Lindt Café Seige in Sydney this week has put Australia in shock.

Sometimes people like to use a photo of an ape evolving into a man throughout the week to depict how much they hate working.

The 39-year-old officer who was taken to hospital with facial wounds from shotgun pellets during the siege came in for special praise after he vowed: "I'll be back at work tomorrow".

We should really give thanks if we open our eyes the next day and “be back at work tomorrow”!

We should also be grateful that Australia is a country with a culture of love and honour:

First of all, according to the initial reports, the two hostages killed actually died trying to protect others: when the hostages realised that the gunman did not intend to let them live to daybreak, they planned to break the lock to quickly run out. When they rushed out, gunman panicked and began shooting, but the store manager Tori Johnson attempted to wrestle the gun from him. The female barrister Katrina Dawson may have been hit by a bullet when she tried to protect her pregnant friend.

Australians did not rebound on Muslims after this event. In fact, a movement was started on social media #Illridewithyou expressed support for Australia's Muslim population. (There are some debates on the political motives behind this hashtag, eg. whether the story about the Muslim woman on the train was true or not, that some people believe Australians overall are already very tolerant of multiculturalism and do not need a hashtag telling them what to do. But I think it’s a waste of time to go into this sort of debate. While I believe the threat of terrorism and the existence of racism in the community are all certainly real, I also believe that the majority of Muslims are good people, and the majority of Australians are very tolerant of multiculturalism. The main point is we see that the majority of Australians responded in a positive and respectful manner overall, and this is impressive).   

People spontaneously started going to Martin Place to pay their respects with flowers. We see the unity of the people and the scene was pretty spectacular.

On Friday, a “Police Thanksgiving Day” was held to give thanks to the police for their hard work.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-siege-ends-more-than-16-hours-of-terror-for-captives-20141216-128j5f.html

Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Psalms 103:1-2

It is easy to forget what God has given us. It is only in the times of adversity that we remember to call on God for mercy. But really, we should also give thanks in the good times.

Psychology studies suggest that when things become increasingly familiar or routine, people start losing interest in it. We all know that when we work long hours, we grow tired of our jobs. We tend forget to give thanks and to take what we have for granted.

Don't forget, many parts of the world are in war and famine: human lives are not valued and hearts are numb. The day following the Sydney Siege, more than 100 schoolchildren were shot dead in Pakistan. In contrast, we are very lucky. Rather than envying our neighbours when they have what we do not have, we should be giving thanks for what we are already blessed with.