The worship service at one of the churches I serve has a unique addition to the order. Right after I read the Scriptures, the congregation has an opportunity to ask questions or make comments. This came about as a result of a suggestion by one of the members and has become a highlight of the worship for both pastor and congregation. While there are occasional Sundays where nobody has a question or comment, there are generally some interesting comments and questions—and several times a year, the ensuing discussion become so interesting and valuable that we never actually get to the sermon, which means I am prepared for another Sunday.
Recently, the Scriptures came from Isaiah and Mark. Both passages prompted some comments and we batted them around for awhile. And then, one of the congregants had a question about the responsive reading that we had used earlier in the worship. It was a legitimate question because the reading was Scripture, a reading from Psalm 27.
The question concerned the author of the Psalm. The question and discussion focused on David rather than the Psalm itself. We re-established the fact that David wrote many of the Psalms but not all of them and then the discussion began to look at the character of the writing. The questioner wanted to know a couple of things:
• Can we figure out what David was doing at the time he wrote each Psalm?
• Why are the Psalms so different from other parts of the Bible, like the Gospels for example?
The first question was relatively easy to deal with. Some Psalms identify the circumstances of the writing either in an explanatory note at the beginning or be the content. The second question was more interesting, at least for me. David’s writings are different from the Gospels or the Epistles or the History books partly because David was a poet whose response to the realities and events of his life drove him to record his thoughts and feelings. He wasn’t writing history, biography, theology, explanations, or apologetics. David was writing his feelings.
The best explanation of the difference I could offer was to suggest that if David had been alive today, he would have been a blogger. I don’t read a lot of blogs but many of the ones I do seem to be focused in the writer’s response to their life and the realities they see and experience. Certainly there are the factual blogs, the history blogs, the informative blogs—but there are also a uncounted number of blogs that deal with the writer’s feelings and responses. Even this blog has a strong element of that, although I will never be accused of being a poet.
David used his poetry to help himself deal with his life—and given that his life had a significant number of highs and lows, he had a lot to deal with. In his day, his audience would have been limited to people in the royal court and the temple. But somehow, through the grace of God, some of his poetry was recorded and made available not just to the people of his day but also to people of all time. David probably holds the record for the all time highest number of views—and likes, for that matter.
While it is interesting to speculate how well David would have done as a 21st century blogger, there is no need to actually speculate on his ability to connect with people. His words, written over 2500 years ago in a small, somewhat backwater country in a language that most of us don’t speak manage to cut across time, language and culture and touch something within us that shouts that he got it—he understands. We read his blog, we are touched by the words and ideas and emotions, we react—and most of the time, we are helped. The poetry from the past enables us to deal better with our life in this very different present. And, given the track record, if the world lasts another 2500 years, or 25,000 or 250,000 more years, people are still going to read the Psalms and be touched and changed and helped.
That is pretty good for a 2500+ year old poet who was just trying to make sense of his life using his propensity towards poetry. Most of the rest of us: bloggers, preachers, writers, even poets can only dream of writing something so significant.
May the peace of God be with you.
legassieblog 