The God Who Forgives, the God Who Delivers, the God Who Provides
Psalm 65 from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (The Jewish Bible)
Praise befits You in Zion, O God;vows are paid to You;all flesh comes to You,You who hear prayer.When all manner of sins overwhelm me,it is You who forgive our iniquities.Happy is the [one] You choose and bring nearto dwell in Your courts;may we be sated with the blessings of Your house,Your holy temple.Answer us with victory through awesome deeds,
O God, our deliverer,in whom all the ends of the earthand the distant seasput their trust;who by His power fixed the mountains firmly,who is girded with might,who stills the raging seas,the raging waves,and tumultuous peoples.Those who live at the ends of the earth are awed by Your signs;You make the lands of sunrise and sunset shout for joy.You take care of the earth and irrigate it;You enrich it greatly,with the channel of God full of water;
You provide grain for [people];for so do You prepare it.Saturating its furrows,leveling its ridges,You soften it with showers,You bless its growth.You crown the year with Your bounty;fatness is distilled in Your paths;the pasturelands distill it;the hills are girded with joy.The meadows are clothed with flocks,the valleys mantled with grain;they raise a shout, they break into song.Every Sunday morning, one of the scriptures we read is from the Psalms. We often approach the Psalms in worship as something to mumble our way through or chant our way through—more, I suspect, like something to be endured than to be enjoyed. The psalms were originally the “sacred poetry that was used in ancient Israelite and Judean worship.” They were also “records of human response to God” AND “God’s word to humanity.”[1] Yet too often, we forget that the psalms are not just ancient poetry, but that they express every possible human emotion.There is the lament of an individual—sometimes referred to as a “complaint or prayer for help.”[2] Most psalms fall into this category. There are the psalms in which the entire community laments, or asks for help from God. There are hymns of praise, royal psalms—often used on a king’s coronation day, wisdom poetry, entrance liturgies, psalms of trust, prophecies, and psalms that focus on thanksgiving.Whether a person is crying out to God, asking why something has happened in her life, or venting anger towards one’s enemy when a trusted friend has betrayed him, every one of the 150 psalms focuses on the relationship between God and human beings.Sometimes a psalm is written from a number of viewpoints. For example, if you imagine several actors on a stage, speaking the words of a psalm, one actor might be an individual addressing the audience. Another actor might turn and address God. A third actor might speak words from God’s perspective. In other words, when we read the psalms, it sometimes helps to ask ourselves, “Who is speaking right now?” Is it one person, or several? Or is it like a chorus?
If we look carefully at Psalm 65 today, we see that it is “a song of praise or a communal song of thanksgiving.”[3] In its original setting, it was likely a seven-day “ritual for harvest thanksgiving.” Later, it was used at “the festival of Tabernacles,” also known as “Sukkot.” In fact, this festival was celebrated a couple of weeks ago by our brothers and sisters at Oseh Shalom. They built outdoor shelters. They celebrated “the changing of the seasons, fruits of the harvest, time spent with family, friends and neighbors.” As my colleague Rabbi Doug Heifetz noted on his Facebook page, “We call the holiday ‘the time of our joy,’ but it’s more than a window of time to be happy. The festival helps build our vessel of gratitude and contentment.”[4] In this sense, perhaps Psalm 65 is a vessel, or psalm, of gratitude. Its focus is the God who forgives, the God who delivers, the God who provides.The first section is the God who forgives. It begins just as we do every Sunday morning, with God’s people who gather for worship. Yet the emphasis is a little different than you and I might imagine our gathering at St. Philip’s for worship. Rather than focusing on our choice to come to worship, the psalmist notes that it is God who chooses us to come near to God’s presence in worship. Our worship is made possible only because God forgives our broken, human nature that rebels against our Creator. In other words, the very fact that we are drawn to God has less to do with you and me than it has to do with God’s gracious and abundant love and forgiveness.
In verse five, the psalmist moves to the God who delivers or saves. As Christians, many of us have been taught to see salvation as individual or personal. However, the sense of salvation in the Hebrew scriptures is broader than an individual decision. It is more focused on God’s actions rather than human decision. The God of creation is a God whose “delivering work is . . .never less than, but always more than, personal forgiveness.”[5] In this psalm, God’s deliverance of us is promised in the strength of the mountains, “in the raging seas, the raging waves, and tumultuous peoples,”[6] which is another way of saying in times of “political turmoil, social dislocation, and communal despair.”[7]So in all situations of our lives, whether they are good or bad, God is a God who is with us, who can deliver us. The God who provides is addressed by the psalmist in verse nine.[8] God “takes care of the earth and irrigates it.” God enriches the earth. God provides grain for humankind. God prepares the earth. The psalmist is effusive and poetic in the last part of this song of praise. In terms of the good earth, it is God who saturates its plowed furrows. God softens the earth, filling the dry, cracked ground with so much rain, the earth is transformed into a green, lush paradise. God crowns the year with God’s bounty, and the only appropriate response by God’s creatures and God’s creation is one of praise, of music, of thanksgiving.Recently, Pat and I were reminded of the joy of God’s creatures. I had had my yard re-seeded and fertilized in late September. The company left instructions for watering. I was to water the lawn three times a day the first week, twice a day the second week, once a day the third week, then every two days or so. Last week, after Pat had adjusted the sprinklers and watched to see if the spray was hitting the right areas, she came in and told me I needed to look out of the window. She said, “The birds are going nuts out there!” When I looked out, there were birds flying in and out of the sprays of water—cardinals, robins, wrens, sparrows. Even the rabbit who usually visits late in the afternoon was hopping through the sprinkler, as were the ever-present squirrels. The birds were drinking, hopping up and down, fluffing their feathers. . .all the while chattering like happy children. It was as if God’s creatures were exulting in the unexpected showers provided in their habitat! They were not singing human songs, but their joy and delight in this cool, clean water was so evident in their behavior. Of course in this case, the owner of the lawn was providing the water. Yet if we believe Psalm 65, not really. The true provider of water is the Creator of the universe—God. Perhaps the refreshment of water helped our birds, rabbit and squirrels to be more fully what God has created them to be.So it is with God’s people. If we understand that God forgives us, that God delivers or saves us, and that God provides for us, we may be better able to live more fully into the human beings God created us to be. We will draw near to God in worship. We will thank God for all of God’s abundance and providence. We will live more fully into people of “justice, generosity and joy.”[9] When we can do this, we will be able to say from our hearts, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” Amen.© The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJiltonPictures of grain and Sukkoth booth accessed through Google images.Pictures of ocean and mountain taken by McJilton.