Have you
ever wondered when we sing or hear a psalm, whose voice it is we’re hearing? I
don’t mean, “Who’s the cantor?,” as important of a question as that might be. I
don’t even mean, historically who wrote each psalm, though as a scholar of
scripture, that’s the kind of question that exercises me in my day job. No, I
mean to ask it on a level and in a way that respects and values and cherishes
through whom the psalm came to us – the Ancient Israelite composers, the scribes
who copied them out, the modern composers who wrote our settings, the musicians
here who lead us in song – but asks a question that’s a level deeper than that.
Whose voice is it really that we’re hearing?
In our
first reading, which is part of St. Peter’s first ever sermon, right after
receiving the Spirit at Pentecost, Peter gives a remarkable answer: Christ’s.
In the psalms, we hear Christ speaking. He’s wrestling with what to make of Psalm
16. Now the heading of psalm 16 in Hebrew says תפלה לדוד, literally a “prayer for David,” or “concerning
David” or “of David,” and Peter understands that as meaning that King David
wrote those words. But, if this is David’s voice, we’d expect words like “I /
me / my” to refer to David. But, Peter points out, that doesn’t work. Because
whoever the “I /me my” refers to, it’s to someone who didn’t see the corruption
of death, and Peter knows where David’s tomb is and it’s not empty! So, Peter
gives his remarkable solution: in the psalms, no matter who wrote them, no
matter how they’re passed on to us, we hear Christ’s voice. It’s not just that
someone wrote a psalm that talked about Christ. No, we hear Christ speaking.
When we sing a psalm, the whole community gathered here for a brief time lets
Christ speak through us.
St.
Augustine took this idea, that in the psalms we hear Christ’s voice, and ran
with it. He came up with some really beautiful insights. He noticed, for
instance, that some of the psalms are spoken in a plural voice, “We / us / our.”
Those, he says, are when Christ is speaking in his body, speaking as the body
of Christ, the whole Church. Others are speaking as his head. And I’ve always
been most moved by how he reads the psalms of lament, the psalms were the voice
speaking feels alone, abandoned, hurt, sorrowful. Those could be about the pain
and suffering Christ knew in his life, especially in his passion, but that
would make them past tense, and Augustine’s (and Peter’s) insight is not the in
the psalms were hear what Christ said but what Christ is saying,
and Jesus isn’t suffering anymore. Jesus isn’t, but we are, some of us more
pointedly than others. And that’s where this image of the Church as the Body of
Christ becomes so powerful. For when the foot is stamped on, the tongue cries
out. The tongue is not stamped on, the foot does not cry, but the tongue can
truly say “I am hurt.” Christ cries out when any of his sisters or brothers is
hurt. And he can do that truly, not in a make believe way, because of how
closely joined he is to us, that his very Spirit is poured out on us, closer to
us than we are to ourselves, and also, just as importantly, because he has
known the fullness of human hurt. And he calls us to, to look to see what
members of his body are being stamped on and to cry out, joining our voice to
his, to theirs.
But, all
of that is a long way from what Peter’s doing with Psalm 16 in this sermon.
Because Psalm 16 isn’t about crying out in pain. There are so many other psalms
about that, but this one is about joy. “You fill me with joy in your presence.”
Christ knows the fullness of joy in the presence of God the Father. And that’s
where he promises to take us.
And that’s
a reminder that at least I need this Easter season. This joyful Eastertide!
Because it’s so easy for me to dwell with and marvel at, and hopefully be
stirred into action by, images like Christ calling out for us in our pain and
bidding us join him in doing that for others, that we almost forget that pain
and crying out isn’t the end of the story. Joy is. Or our gospel today, the
beautiful story of Emmaus. I looked back at what I preached three years ago on
this day (when we last had these readings), and it was a meditation on Christ
presents himself to us in the breaking of the bread; the central image
is the brokenness, that’s how those two travelers recognize Christ and how we
can too. But the story doesn’t end with brokenness. It ends with hearts warmed
for these travelers. It ends with the broken church, who doubted the Easter
witness of the women, made whole again, one again, with one song: “Christ is
risen! Alleluia!” But it doesn’t just end with Christ’s brokenness and our joy.
It ends with Christ’s joy. Christian joy is Christian because Christ is joyful.
And that joy derives from the amazing intimacy of full presence with the
Father. In all the images of Christ we have in our heads, how major a role does
Christ the joyful play? In the end, that will be the only Christ we know.
No comments:
Post a Comment